Material choices for the building frame : Effects on the accomplishment of the Sustainable Development Goals’ targets

Potential synergy effects and conflicts, so-called interactions, between a climate action that aims to mitigate the climate impact and five targets of the Sustainable Development Goals are identified in this study. The climate action is Conscious material choices for the frame, and the materials assessed are climate improved concrete and domestic wood. Standard concrete is used as the business as usual scenario. A pre-school building is used as an example building to demonstrate the difference in the climate impact of a frame made from the two materials assessed in the study. Life cycle assessments (LCA) of the frames shows that the domestic wood frame has a lower climate impact than the climate improved concrete frame.Two methods are used in this study. The first method is making an LCA for transportation of the materials assessed to see the environmental impact, and there is one scenario for each material where the transportation method is by a truck and one that is by train. The second method used for the study is a goal interaction scoring-method from “A draft framework for understanding SDG interactions” by Nilsson et al. (2016) that gives the interactions a score based on specific criteria. The scores are visualised in a colour coordinated matrix. The interactions generate synergies if the sums of the scores in the matrix are positive and will likely help accomplish the target. If the sums of the scores in the matrix are negative, it indicates that there are conflicts that could endanger the possibilities to reach the target.LCA of the transport scenarios shows that when the transportation distance is long, the climate impact is lowest when transporting as much as possible of the materials by train. Transporting the domestic wood for the frame by train (for longer distances) has a lower climate impact than transporting the climate improved concrete. For shorter distances, there is not a significant difference between transportation by truck or by train. The climate improved concrete gets score 0, meaning that there are neither positive nor negative interactions for the chosen material for the frame. The domestic wood gets the score +8, which indicates that there are synergies. Both the climate improved concrete and the domestic wood should not interfere with the accomplishment of the Sustainable Development Goal’s targets. However, the domestic wood for the frame generates more synergies and by choosing the domestic wooden frame for a building using a train as a transportation of the material when possible has the lowest environmental impact of the assessed materials for the frame.

<p>2020-06-08</p>