A Prospective Life Cycle Assessment of Insulation and Window Systems under Evolving Electricity and Recycling Scenarios for Building Energy Retrofit in Italy

The necessity of building renovation for the transition to a Net Zero future requires the extensive use of insulating materials with benefits in terms of reduced operational energy demand, but at the expense of increased embodied environmental impacts. In this work, future material scenarios were developed taking into account both the expected electricity mix evolution and the introduction of different amounts of recyclate in construction materials. The results showed that the future trends in the electricity grid and in the recyclate introduction within construction materials would potentially lead to a strong reduction of the environmental impact of the selected insulating materials production (-70 % for XPS, EPS, stone wool and -90 % for glass wool). From an economic perspective, it has resulted that biobased solutions are not as convenient as conventional ones. It emerged, therefore, the need for legislation to promote the use of efficient energy systems through the utilization of specific materials with low environmental impacts (wood fibre panels and windows with wood frames). Thus, the predictions of this work can be useful to plan future investments, considering that the trade-off between embodied and operational impacts may change significantly in the next decades.