Background The building and construction sectors’ impact on the environment is significant: - Dutch buildings are responsible for about 21 million tons of CO2-equivalents of the use of energy - Each year the building industry produces 16 million tons of building and demolition waste - Exhaustion of resources is another impact of building on environment. In the last few years sustainable building in the Netherlands has been put into practice at a local level in particular. Local and regional governments have concluded covenants with market parties such as clients and architects. In addition to the Energy Performance Standard (EPN), the Building Decree is probably going to set requirements for the use of materials (Material-related Environmental Level for Buildings, MMG), radiation (Radiation Performance Standard, SPN) and water performance (Water Performance Standard, WPN) of buildings. Currently dozens of tools are being implemented to encourage sustainable construction but a lack of common language obstructs the introduction of sustainability in the mainstream building activities. Within this background, project partners SEV (Steering Group on Experiments in Public Housing) and SBR (Dutch Foundation for Building Research)set up the large-scale experiment in three countries: the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK, with 17 municipalities and over 100 demonstration projects to test the support for performance-based policies and tools. Objectives The main objective of LIFE Equation was to show that the common language in the earlier developed Eco-quantum (NL) and ENVEST/EcoHomes (UK) tools – Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tools – would reduce the environmental impact of buildings in a quantifiable, reproducible and efficient way. The objective of LIFE-Equation was to demonstrate and disseminate how more effective sustainable building policy can be formulated based on performance requirements instead of checklists. A secondary objective was for municipalities and market parties to gain experience with the innovative performance-based sustainable building tools. The following concrete results were expected: - Reduction by 20% - 50% of the environmental impact in the participating demonstration projects in comparison with the existing standard new buildings; - A full set of performance-oriented design and policy tools for sustainable building; - Recommendations for sustainable design and policymaking based on intensive use of tools in a variety of international demonstration projects; - Active dissemination of the results during all phases of the project. Results The project was carried out in two rounds, a policy round from September 2002 to February 2003 and a practice round from May to November 2003. During the policy round the main role was for municipalities and other policy-makers. After the selection of projects a new policy round was formulated and environmental targets were set. In order to make the targets quantifiable and allow communication, a toolbox was developed. In the Netherlands and Belgium, the most important instrument in the toolbox was Eco-Quantum (EQ) – an advanced computer model, based on LCA (Life Cycle Analysis), which calculates the environmental impacts of materials, water and energy. The environmental impact of the building would be expressed in points/m² of the building. The outcome is one environmental indicator. The UK used its own tool – EcoHomes, an Environmental Assessment method for homes with environmental performance expressed on a scale from Pass to Excellent. In a first policy round, 17 municipalities (NL) and decision-makers (B and UK) gained experiences with the innovative environmental assessment tools, EQ and EcoHomes. During the second practice round, 116 sustainable building projects were evaluated during different stages of the building process with the help of the performance-based tools. Projects were evaluated and optimised by the designers and developers. One of the consequences was the development of the VO-tool, a simplified version of Eco-Quantum, to help decision making during the preliminary design stage. (Experiences in the Netherlands and Belgium showed that the LCA-tool EQ in its current shape was too scientific and too difficult to use for local communities and designers.) The evaluated Dutch projects showed an average improvement of their environmental performance of 15% compared to the Dutch standard. EcoHomes, which was marketed in 2000, is becoming successful in the UK. Decision-making organisations in the area of sustainable building in the UK are using it to set targets in their sustainable building policy. At the end of the project already 6,000 units were certified by EcoHomes in the UK. The project demonstrated how policy makers and the market parties can use in practice performance based environmental requirements based on the LCA-methodology Tools based on LCA makes it possible to quantify the actual environmental quality. The input of Eco-Quantum (amount and sort of material) can be entered in a cost calculation programme; where after insight can be given into the cost aspects of the environmental regulations. However, the project indicated that private builders in Belgium and home-buyers in the Netherlands were reluctant to spend extra money on a sustainable built house, unless it offered an improvement in comfort or a better living environment. This project has been selected as one of the 24 "Best" LIFE Environment projects in 2004-2005