Embodied Carbon Benefits of Reusing Structural Components in the Built Environment: a Medium-rise Office Building Case Study

This paper provides parametric estimates of embodied carbon reductions when structural components are reused in a typical office building. First, a lower bound of structural material quantities is estimated for a typical steel frame structure in a low-rise office building. The embodied carbon of this conventional design is then compared with values collected from a series of similar existing steel buildings (deQo database) as benchmark. Various scenarios regarding the impact of selective deconstruction, transportation, and cross-section oversizing are modelled and parameterized. The study eventually computes carbon savings over one life cycle of the building project. Results show that reuse remains beneficial for long transport and high oversizing. The discussion calls for more comprehensive studies and refined metrics for quantifying selective deconstruction.