Digitalization of buildings for energy Efficiency: Life cycle assessment of two building monitoring systems

The digitalization trend in buildings is accelerated with the advancements in information and communication technologies (ICT). These technologies enable many opportunities in buildings to achieve resource and energy efficiency based on, either monitoring or advanced control of buildings. The ICT solutions’ overall impacts on the environment are often presumed positive without an assessment based on life cycle thinking. The research on ICT solutions in buildings is mainly related to occupancy, energy and indoor environmental monitoring with the focus on technical performance and potential benefits. There is a lack of studies of the environmental impacts of the enabling technologies, although they could be significant in certain contexts.In this paper, two case study buildings in Sweden with building monitoring systems (BMS) in Sweden are assessed based on life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The two cases were chosen to represent a range between simple and more sophisticated systems. The results show that sensors and wires can contribute significantly to several impact categories and the impacts of electronics used for data acquisition are also important. The climate impact of the production phase, including raw material extraction, is significantly higher than the use and waste management phases. The minimum required energy saving to offset the climate impact of the building monitoring systems are 5% (standard BMS) and 24% (extensive BMS) to have the positive enabling effects outweighing the direct effects. This is comparable to the energy savings that often are assumed when building monitoring systems are introduced. Thus, the direct impacts of the enabling technologies for digitalization might be significant and it is crucial to employ a life cycle perspective when assessing the environmental benefits of digital solutions in buildings.