Component-level embodied carbon database for landscape hard works in Taiwan

Facing the escalating crisis of global warming, life cycle assessment (LCA) for carbon footprint has recently seen rapid development in the building and construction sector. However, the landscaping field has lagged behind the general trend within this broad sector due to the lack of applicable carbon databases. In order to overcome this obstacle, the purpose of this study is to establish a localized carbon database, L-LCC, for Taiwan's landscaping industry based on the ABRI-LCC database and according to EN15978 "cradle to handover" boundary. A critical bottleneck exists in landscaping carbon LCA, which is a dilemma between handicapping complexity in the inventory calculation of construction machinery carbon in landscaping and its mandatory requirement by EN15978. To resolve this, a carbon analysis methodology, adopting a standardized landscape component system and construction process method, is introduced in this study to incorporate construction machinery carbon into an existing component-level carbon database so as to omit complicated inventory calculations. The result shows that the L-LCC database is not on the raw material level, but rather on the higher level of hard landscaping components, e.g. roadways, paving, pond, retaining walls, etc. Such a component-based carbon database exempts users from the cumbersome compilation of raw material data and, instead, directly uses simplified component carbon data to achieve the same results. Landscape project application in carbon reduction design verified this assessment system and the calculation on carbon emissions can be done quickly. The reduction of carbon emissions is 60.3% on the comparison of the traditional and natural construction methods. Consequently, carbon hotspots may be diagnosed and carbon-cutting design may be executed more efficiently in landscaping projects in conclusions.