Embodied energy assessment: a comprehensive review of methods and software tools

Energy and resource conservation holds an inimitable significance when sustainability for the present as well as future comes into picture. With the rise of green/low-energy buildings that have reduced energy consumption while in operation, the exploitation of energy-intensive materials has increased and shifted the carbon consequences to other phases of building life cycle. Therefore, embodied energy of buildings has gained significant attention and efforts have been made to quantify and reduce its contribution. This paper reviews the published literature on embodied energy assessment of buildings from the purview of methods, life cycle assessment tools alone and in conjunction with other software tools such as building information modelling. The paper illustrates the progress in the embodied energy assessment till now and highlights the shortcomings in its standardisation due to geographical, methodical, temporal and boundary system differences among others. A great variation is displayed in the expanse of literature upon organising the results reported. The work also suggests future scope in the area of EE assessment and enhanced digitalisation to address the existing ambiguities.