Life cycle analysis for the expansion of the shopping center "La Roca Village"

Ecopenta conducts Life Cycle Analysis to obtain different credits in the main three environmental certifications: LEED, BREEAM and DGNB.

 Life cycle analysis for the expansion of the shopping center

Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of a building, allows us to analyze and evaluate, exhaustively, the environmental impact that it generates on the ecosystem, from the obtaining of the raw materials that will compose it, until the end of its useful life, going through its construction and maintenance.

The increasing need to establish a regulation for sustainable development, together with the willingness of public institutions and the private sector, to deal with greater environmental problems that affect our planet (depletion of natural resources, global warming, biodiversity loss, etc.), have led to the desire to quantify the effects of the different phases of the constructive and pre-constructive process (considering, even, the resources used for the extraction of raw materials), through Life Cycle Analysis.

Ecopenta has an extensive experience in conducting Life Cycle Analysis, using the OneClick LCA tool, which allows to enter the complete data of the project in question, and obtain, numerical and graphical, information related to the environmental burdens of our building, for each one of the stages of its life.

Among others, Ecopenta has carried out the LCA for the Project of the underground parking and remodelling of La Roca Village commercial complex, in La Roca del Vallès (Barcelona), as part of the MAT 1 credit justification for BREEAM ES New Construction.

The object of the Life Cycle Analysis is an architectural complex of 31,663.8m2, for the use of retail and parking, and has allowed obtaining the maximum number of possible points of the MAT1 credit for the BREEAM certification to which the project is being submitted.

Important aspects of the analysis process:

  • For this specific project, we wanted to achieve the maximum score allowed by BREEAM certification, which went through a very detailed analysis that included the information regarding the structure and the envelope of the building, but also, about its installations.
  • Analysis of global warming potential, depletion of stratospheric ozone, acidification of terrestrial and aquatic sources, eutrophication, tropospheric ozone formation and waste processing.
  • It allows to cover all stages of the life cycle, cradle to grave, analyzing each point separately and in a very explanatory way.
  • It throws information about the most unfavorable aspects of the complete process, so, it allows us to see what are the point on which we can apply improvements to reduce, in a more effective way, the environmental impact.

Thanks to the involvement of all agents implicated in the architectural processes and the commitment and experience of Ecopenta, together, we can achieve a more sustainable way of building the future.