Thomas Jusselme

• Professor
• Professor (Associate) at HES-SO University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland

Can be downloaded fore free from https://www.aramis.admin.ch/Texte/?ProjectID=53407

This paper identifies buildings on pathway to meet carbon targets for embodied emissions aligned with global carbon budgets and mitigation pathways. A simplified bottom-up model is used, assessing multiple variations of a new construction archetype to identify the main strategies to achieve the targets. The model estimates the quantities of the mai...

To tackle the upcoming renovation wave, this work evaluates renovation strategies with a life cycle GHG emissions perspective and includes time and sequencing in the decision-making process. A case study is used to conduct a full life cycle assessment of renovation strategies in line with the Swiss normative context. Improvements in the operational...

This study presents a novel approach to simplify the dynamic life cycle assessment (DLCA) of buildings by identifying and prioritizing influential dynamic parameters (DPs) to improve building energy performance and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Current life cycle assessment (LCA) methodologies lack temporal considerations, which can significantl...

This paper presents an innovative methodology for enhancing energy efficiency assessment procedures in the built environment, with a focus on the Switzerland’s Energy Strategy 2050. The current methodology necessitates intensive expert surveys, leading to substantial time and cost implications. Also, such a process can’t be scaled to a large number...

In accordance with the Paris agreement, the Swiss Climate Strategy (SCS) defines the net-zero target to be reached before 2050, which demands for a thoughtful carbon budget allocation between the different contributors. Ongoing normalization tasks are currently defining life cycle carbon budgets at the building scale aligned with the SCS. While rec...

In accordance with the Paris agreement, the Swiss Climate Strategy (SCS) defines the net-zero target to be reached before 2050, which demands for a thoughtful carbon budget allocation between the different contributors. Ongoing normalization tasks are currently defining life cycle carbon budgets at the building scale aligned with the SCS. While rec...

The building stock is responsible for 24% of carbon emissions in Switzerland and 44% of the final energy use. Considering that most of the existing stock will still be in place in 2050, it becomes essential to better understand this source of emissions. Although the Swiss Cantonal Energy Certificate for Buildings (CECB) database has been used in pr...

Building operation is responsible for 28% of the world’s carbon emissions. In this context, establishing priorities in refurbishment strategies at the scale of a city or a group of buildings is important. Such procedures are usually led by experts in energy performance and, therefore, they are rarely carried out due to their long and costly nature....

Challenging climate goals demand immediate greenhouse gas emissions reductions for long-term temperature stabilization. Given the nearly linear relationship between warming and cumulative net emissions, the carbon budget approach is a useful tool to quantify remaining carbon allowances for countries, sectors, and even buildings. The built environme...

The building sector consumes about one-third of total final energy and contributes to 38% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions around the world. Thus, the EU has established a set of directives that includes the EPBD and the EED to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Hence, France adopted more challenging legislation by introducing the new environmenta...

Stringent limits and reduction strategies paths on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are being defined at different levels for long-term temperature stabilization. Given the nearly linear relationship between warming and cumulative net emissions, a carbon budget approach is required to limit global warming, as stated by the IPCC. In this setting, the...

To tackle the problem of climate change, Swiss energy strategies aim to reach the carbon neutrality by 2050. However, this challenge cannot simply be solved by focusing on the operational energy performance and instead, on a lifecycle evaluation. Thus, in order to reduce the sector’s carbon footprint, building stakeholders need to consider embodied...

In order to limit global warming, remaining carbon budgets have been defined by the IPCC in 2018. In this context translating global goals to local realities implicates a set of different challenges. Standardized methodologies of allocation can support a target-cascading process. On the other hand, local strategies and norms are not currently desig...

The impact of daylighting strategies on a building’s carbon emissions have so far been assessed mostly based on the building’s use phase and their resulting operational benefits, overlooking embodied carbon emissions of material production, construction, maintenance and end of life. This paper proposes a new methodological framework that combines d...

Target values for creating carbon budgets for buildings are important for developing climate-neutral building stocks. A lack of clarity currently exists for defining carbon budgets for buildings and what constitutes a unit of assessment—particularly the distinction between production- and consumption-based accounting. These different perspectives o...

Generally, the environmental impacts of buildings are benchmarked per square meter as a functional unit. However, this practice prevents developing a user-centered approach in which performance is linked to real usage and not building size. Currently, the less a building is used, the lower the energy consumed during its use and, consequently, the i...

Recognized as a powerful methodology for the evaluation of environmental burdens, life cycle assessment (LCA) must be performed with close-to-reality inputs to be robust and accurate. However, the necessary real-world data is hardly available at the design stage, resulting in current LCA practice being mainly based on standards and norms as hypothe...

The international greenhouse gas agreements call for mitigations in the building industry. Thus, the number of scientific publications about life-cycle performance assessment (LCPA) follows an exponential trend since the 2000s. However, previous surveys highlighted that the use of these methods is still not a common practice. Hence, it is of primar...

Environmental performance objectives in terms of energy consumption and carbon emission targets can be found in various building norms and certifications schemes. These targets are often dependent upon the building program (e.g. office), but independent from its context; the same value is imposed for two buildings of the same program regardless of...

While ambitious environmental objectives are being set for new constructions in Switzerland, the assessment of urban-scale projects and comparison of their performance to national targets are made possible by a growing number of life-cycle assessment (LCA) tools. However, previous research emphasizes the lack of existing tools to support the decisi...

Environmental performance assessment of the built environment tends to focus mostly on operational final energy consumption of buildings located within a specific context. Such a limited scope prevents broader usability of findings in practice. In Switzerland, the ‘2000-W society’ vision provides a theoretical framework towards energy transition. I...

This chapter aims to summarize key findings in the form of operational recommendations in order to encourage professionals in the construction business to develop comfortable, low-carbon buildings. The key drivers of a living lab research process are also highlighted to help those who are or will be involved in a living lab to improve its usability...

The built environment is facing environmental regulations more ambitious than ever before. In Europe, a law will lead all new buildings to the Nearly Zero-Energy performance level. However, even if a building does not have any energy consumption for its operation phase, it still has embodied impacts. To that end, Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) methods...

Coupling photovoltaic (PV) systems with energy storage (ES) in buildings, enables to increase the building's energy autonomy and the self-consumption of onsite renewables. ES increases nonetheless the life cycle environmental impact of the stored energy. As such, there exists a threshold where the GHG emission benefits of using ES start to compensa...

The data presented in this article are related to the research article entitled “Temporal variations in the primary energy use and greenhouse gas emissions of the electricity provided to the Swiss grid” Vuarnoz and Jusselme (2018). The provided data are the hourly CO2-eq emission factors, and the hourly conversion factors for the cumulative energy...

A variety of building labels and norms exist that set evermore-ambitious environmental and energy performance targets. In parallel, a growing number of building performance evaluation tools are adopting the life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology to allow verifying if a project, based on its detailed description, reaches these targets. However, suc...

Due to climate change, the built environment is facing increasingly strict environmental targets. Thus, architects are challenged to design evermore high-performing buildings, a task for which they can no longer depend solely on their experience and intuition. Building performance simulation (BPS) tools have become central in this context to suppor...

Exploration methods combine parametric energy assessments and data visualization to support building designers at early design stages. When exploration methods come to Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) and the Global Warming Potential (GWP) assessment, a larger number of input parameters induces a very high computation load. Previous researches suggested...

Huge amount of energy resources greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is devoted to the built environment. Therefore, an accurate assessment method of these indicators is compulsory. To take advantage of the temporal variation in the primary energy use and associated GHG emissions of the energy supply, we propose two ways of integrating hourly life-cycle...

It is a frequent practice nowadays to use mean annual conversion factors (CFs) when performing life-cycle assessment (LCA) of processes and products that use electricity supplied by the grid. In this paper, we conduct an hourly assessment of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission factor, along with the conversion factors for the cumulative energy demand...

Free cooling strategies are gaining importance in design practice due to the increased risk of overheating in well-insulated buildings with high internal loads such as offices. The state of the art highlights that the most efficient passive solution for indoor temperature stabilization and control is the integration of thermal mass with an optimize...

Building envelope design has gained importance as a means to reduce heating and cooling demand related to a building’s operational phase. However, in high internal load buildings, such as offices, internal gains can easily lead to overheating. Thermal inertia (TI) and night ventilation have a great potential for reducing heat loads and temperature....

The built environment is one of the major contributors of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. To tackle climate change, global targets have been set for this sector. Although life-cycle assessment (LCA) methods are typically used to evaluate a building project's embodied energy in its final stages of development, this evaluation would be especially val...

The architecture, environment and construction industry is facing, on the one hand, ambitious environmental regulations for low carbon and net zero energy buildings, and on the other hand, the emergence of new techniques such as parametric assessment and cloud computing. As a result, there is a dramatic increase of performance analysis and collecte...

Assessment of the environmental impacts of furniture and appliances throughout the LCA of a nearly net-zero energy building. • Furniture is responsible for around 10% and appliances for 25% of the building''s overall impacts. • Embodied impacts dominate over the operational phase impacts. • For offices, laptops have the greatest impacts the source...

Buildings are increasingly required to be efficient not just in their operation, but from construction to demolition. Thus, interest in natural construction materials with low embodied environmental impacts has increased, (re)inventing materials and components from vernacular architecture. Compressed Earth Bricks (CEBs) are an example of this kind...

To investigate the relationship between occupants’ perception of control over building elements and their comfort, we conducted a study where two prototype office rooms were compared: while the first room allowed occupants to open or close the window and configure the shading, the second one was fully automated. The quantitative analysis of collect...

To face climate change, greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets are specified into national policies. In France, the objective is to divide by 4 (Factor 4) the GHG emissions by 2050 comparing to 1990. The built environment, as a main contributor, is targeted by these policies: the future 2020 French regulation will set up GHG emissions targets for th...

The smart living lab project is a pioneering, inter-disciplinary and inter-institutional platform that combines several fields of research related to construction technologies. It aims to be a center of national scope, recognized on an international level and involving a variety of players and institutions. One of the smart living lab’s projects is...

Developing building projects with low environmental impacts is a real challenge, yet a problem faced every day by designers. To that end, in the design process, iteration between propositions and objectives have been used that are complex and time consumption. The impact targets leading to low-carbon buildings have the potential to simplify this co...

To face climate change, Switzerland has introduced the 2050 energy strategy by fixing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the built environment. Designers will, as a result, have to use Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) to increase operating performances while minimizing embodied impacts, but the integration of LCA at an early design stage adds a degree o...

Due to different temporal combinations of energy generation processes, the global warming potential (GWP) of energy supply evolves constantly. Despite this, the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions related to the energy consumption in buildings are commonly assessed with yearly averaged carbon content of the energy supply. The knowledge of the hourly car...

Although a building lifetime is not predictable, it is an essential data in the yearly impact calculation. Yet, in the assessment of the environmental impacts of building the lifetime is considered as a fixed value. The purpose of this study is to introduce a new dynamic interpretation of LCA results, which aims at improving the reliability of asse...

The building sector is known as a major contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy consumption. These impacts are commonly evaluated by life cycle assessment (LCA), which assess the potential impacts of a building from the construction to the end of life. LCA considers: the operating impacts (OI) occurring during the service life of b...