Carbon Footprint Determination Through Life Cycle Analysis, Case Study: Administration Building of Public Services Enterprise

Abstract

This paper describes carrying out a life cycle analysis (LCA),
considering the consumption and emissions present in the
administration building of a public service company, in a city of less
than one million inhabitants, to quantify its carbon footprint. The
LCA is a methodological framework to estimate and evaluate the
environmental impacts attributable to a product or service during
all stages of its life. In this sense, the methodology proposed by
the Colombian Technical Standard NTC- ISO 14040 and ISO 14046
of 2006 was developed, where, initially, the phases of: definition
of the objective and scope, inventory analysis, environmental
impact assessment and, finally, interpretation of results, to
determine the carbon footprint, which quantifies the amount of
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to the atmosphere, generated
by the consumption of the qualifiers in the inputs and outputs,
defined in the study, such as: electricity, water, wastewater,
refrigerants, among others. The results obtained show that the
administration building of public service enterprise generated a
carbon footprint of 509.3 tons CO2
equivalent for the year 2019,
where the main contributors are the consumption of electricity
and ACPM with 96.7 and 94.9 Ton de CO2
equivalent, respectively.
Also, it was evidence that the consumption of paper and propane
gas are the qualifiers for the lowest carbon footprint, with a
generation of only 92.3 and 24 kg of CO2
equivalent, respectively.