Passive components for reducing environmental impacts of buildings:analysis of an experimental green roof

The reduction of the environmental impacts related to the building sector is a matter of outmost importance concerning the sustainable utilization of resources related to human activities. Such sector is in fact responsible for about 40% of both release of pollutants in the atmosphere and energy consumption. When trying to reduce buildings’ environmental impacts, as well as to limit their energy consumption, building envelope passive systems can be used. Amongst these, green roofs have been gaining global attention due to their benefits in terms of resilience and sustainability, in order to mitigate the unfavourable urbanization effects. Research on the green roof has been indeed increasingly raising in recent years. Although the subject of green roofs has been dealt with extensively from many different points of view, there are currently some limits on which improvements can be made. In particular, the aim of the present work is to consider a somewhat overlooked aspect regarding green roofs, which is the overall energy- environmental impact of such building component. The present work reports the results of a case study conducted on a Sicilian building sited in the Department of Engineering of the University of Palermo, where the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology has been applied.