Skip to main content

Whole-building whole-of-life framework

The New Zealand whole-building whole-of-life framework provides tools, data and information to support decision making for sustainable building design. It assists calculation of the climate change impacts and other environmental impacts of our buildings.

Calculating environmental impact

We cannot put a meter on a building to measure its environmental impacts. This can only be achieved through calculation using techniques such as carbon footprinting or life cycle assessment (LCA). For complex, long-lived products such as buildings, this calculation requires a lot of data, scenarios and assumptions.

The framework supports these calculations through the tool LCAQuick and the carbon footprint data provided by BRANZ CO₂NSTRUCT.

LCAQuick: Life cycle assessment tool

Use LCAQuick to calculate the greenhouse gas emissions (and other environmental impacts) associated with building designs and to iteratively reduce or design out carbon (and other environmental impacts).

BRANZ CO₂NSTRUCT: Embodied carbon and energy datasheet

BRANZ CO₂NSTRUCT contains embodied greenhouse gas and energy data for construction materials and products. The data in BRANZ CO₂NSTRUCT is derived from several sources, and provided in the database with a data quality metric.

About the framework

The pages below provide more information about:

  • how and why the New Zealand whole-building whole-of-life framework was developed
  • reference buildings to compare building plans
  • building carbon footprints and LCAs
  • environmental indicators calculated by the framework.

  • About the framework

    This section identifies the intended users of the New Zealand whole-building whole-of-life framework and how they can interact with and contribute to it.

    View more

  • Reference buildings

    BRANZ has calculated the carbon footprint and other environmental impacts of a set of reference buildings using the current data available in LCAQuick.

    View more

  • Data

    This section provides data that has been compiled by BRANZ to support carbon footprinting and LCAs of buildings.

    View more

  • Indicators

    International building sustainability standards set out environmental and other indicators for calculation when undertaking building LCA.

    View more

  • Providing feedback, information and data

    BRANZ welcomes feedback, information and data to add to and improve the current resources in the framework.

    View more

Framework applications

These applications can be used by architects, designers and engineers to help make sustainable design decisions early in the construction process.

  • LCAQuick

    This free life cycle assessment tool has been developed by BRANZ to helps architects, designers and structural engineers make sustainable design decisions.

    View more

  • BRANZ CO2NSTRUCT

    This datasheet provides embodied carbon and energy values for building materials and products.

    View more