Olivier Jolliet, Life Cycle Systems Lecture

What matters for building sustainability? Based on a Life Cycle Assessment of a low energy house, this presentation shows that developing innovative solutions for material and for process organization is equally important to further energy and water savings during the use phase. We will then identify key decisions, factors and decision makers along building life cycle: Sustainability can only be improved if all of the stakeholders incorporate the life cycle perspective and if both impacts and costs are considered.

We will consider the how to implement this idea for:

1)engineering designers and architects

2)public policy making and the recycling industry

3)user friendly tools to be made available to communicate widely

4)investors and corporate managers

And through this process, Jolliet will shortly illustrate how the Life Cycle Approach can be extended to also address social impacts in a consistent way with environmental and economic performance.

- Olivier Jolliet is an assistant professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, heading the Industrial Ecology & Life Cycle Systems Group.