Advice provided by: Sarah Gudeman, LEED AP, EIT, Morrissey Engineering, Inc.

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Gina asks: Could you further explain the direct and indirect environmental impact in reference to Life Cycle Analysis and Life Cycle Costing? Specifically, what is an example of each? Thanks!

Answer: Gina, thanks for your question. I’ll try to answer as best I can, but I feel like I should preface that I’m by no means an expert in Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) and Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA).

A LCA (also known as Life Cycle Assessment) provides a formal process of examining the environmental impacts of a material, product, or service through its entire life-cycle. This includes everything from extraction of raw material, processing, transportation, installation, use and maintenance and reuse/recycling/disposal if applicable. LCCA, when traditionally used in the building industry, it is utilized to estimate the overall cost of a project alternative to help select the best option to ensure lowest overall cost of ownership to meet the client and owner’s project requirements.

Direct and indirect environmental impacts can be incorporated into a project’s LCCA by including costs associated with the environmental impacts caused by the building in its life cycle. This requires assigning weighting values to things like the cost of an environmentally friendly product (recycled countertops, for example) versus the ‘traditional non-recycled option’. Other examples include cost of implementation of environmental management systems, tax breaks for items like renewable energy, utility costs, environmental savings from recycling and reuse, etc.

Typically direct environmental impacts have to do with a measurable and immediate effect (utilizing reclaimed materials or installing solar panels, for example) while indirect environmental impacts are observed down the road in the future (installing a geothermal heat pump system, or white roof).

The Whole Building Design Guide offers a plethora of information on the topic of LCA and LCCA, available for further research at http://www.wbdg.org/references/mou_lca.php and http://www.wbdg.org/resources/lcca.php, respectively. Hopefully this answer helps point you in the right direction.