In order to carry out a systematic assessment of the impact of buildings, the emission levels should be analyzed quantitatively based on the impact analysis of each of the facilities tested. Therefore, each of the tested objects will be assessed separately, and its features will be taken into account, which is necessary for the interpretation of the environmental performance of buildings. Anand and Amor
[40] indicate that there is still a research gap in this area, which makes it challenging to conduct a comparative analysis of buildings using the LCA method. Many researchers focused on reviewing the literature in the area of life-cycle assessment and its impact on the environmental assessment of buildings, which undoubtedly allowed to enrich and systematize knowledge in this area, which is an important step towards the elimination of the aforementioned barriers or problems with the use of this method. Khasreen et al. 2009 highlighted the importance of LCA as a decision support tool in the construction sector
[41]. Ramesh et al.
[42] performed a detailed analysis of the effectiveness of applying the LCA method in the environmental assessment of buildings on a large group of 73 cases from 13 countries. A similar research area was adopted by Sharma et al.
[43], who also studied the performance of the LCA in assessing buildings located in different areas, but focused in particular on energy consumption by building types and greenhouse gas emissions. Rashid and Yusoff
[44], Chau et al.
[14] and Islam et al.
[45] reviewed the LCA, Life Cycle Energy Analysis (LCEA) and Life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) methods to distinguish building materials that have a significant impact on the environment. The problems with using the LCA method to compare the impact of individual buildings on the environment indicated by Anand and Amor
[40] were analyzed by Soust-Verdaguer et al.
[16], who identified possible simplifications for each study to develop LCA. A similar research area—verifications of the application nature of the LCA method for assessing the construction sector were carried out by Saynajoki et al.
[15]. The applicative nature of LCA can be found in work by Vilches et al.
[46], who investigated the impact on the environmental assessment of renovations and renovations of buildings carried out using the LCA method. Further possibilities of using LCA in Building Information Modeling (BIM) were investigated by: Lu et al.
[47], Llatas et al.
[48] and Potrc Obrecht et al.
[49]. Lu et al.
[47] performed a critical analysis of BIM integrated with LCA and life-cycle costing (LCC). Llatas et al.
[48] focused on the possibility of integrating the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) with the process of building design and BIM. Potrc Obrecht et al.
[49] analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of various methods of the BIM integration process with LCA. The construction area is extensive, hence attempts to use the LCA method also for individual construction products. Yurong Zhang et al.
[50] undertook a literature review on applying the LCA method in the concrete production process with the use of ore waste recycling. Concrete is the most widely used construction product. Its annual consumption is estimated at between 13 and 21 trillion tonnes
[51]. Sustainable development requirements and the considerable production needs of concrete promote the use of waste materials in its production. The use of recycled aggregate concrete (RAC) is becoming more and more common, and the LCA method allows to compare the environmental impact of concrete production using the traditional natural aggregate concrete (NAC) and RAC methods
[52][53][54]. Dong et al.
[38] (p. 4), while reviewing the literature, indicated the need to compare the environmental performance of buildings. The existing criteria have been developed based on: (1) the level of greenhouse gas emissions, (2) stages of the life cycle of a building, (3) absolute or relative value, (4) analysis of the entire building or its elements, and (5) top-down or bottom-up approaches (Hollbeerg et al.
[39]) (see
Table 1).
To answer the research question—what emission levels should a building have throughout its life cycle, for different impact categories, respectively, Dong et al.
[38] applied two research methods: (1) case study selection and (2) comparative analysis using CML 2001
[55] and IMPACT 2002+
[45]. As a result of the research, the factors influencing the environment of the building’s life cycle (including three stages: (1) production, (2) use and (3) end-of-life) were identified and grouped by categories (
Table 2).