Resource strategy for the City of Stuttgart

Within the LCA, the new construction of a daycare centre and the renovation of a school are examined with regard to their greenhouse gas potentials and primary energy requirements in different variants. The grey energy is also part of the LCA with regard to the minimization potential, which is why a guideline and a corresponding tool were developed in a further step in order to estimate this. The guide and the tool consider the possibilities of the overall planning of a building and the selection of building materials and technical building equipment.

The determination of the building material stock, i.e., already existing resources of the City of Stuttgart, was also part of the assignment. This refers, on the one hand, to the current building material stock within the municipal buildings and, on the other hand, to possible scenarios regarding the further development of the building material stock within the next 50 years. The aim is to enable the city to assess various measures for implementing sustainable construction and to shape the city’s resource strategy accordingly.

The results show that it is worth to strive for promising and proactive sustainability goals from the beginning. The guide and tool now provide the means to identify and assess opportunities for action. The building material inventory, in turn, makes it possible to estimate resources available for urban mining in the future. In summary, it can be argued  that individual measures, such as the selection of energy sources, the quality of the construction work and the choice of building materials, when considered together, represent a major lever for promoting construction sustainability