UBC Undergraduate Research

Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre Burtwistle, Jason; Kutyn, Kenneth; Miller, Adam; Ross, Zack

Abstract

A life cycle assessment of the Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Center (DMTSC) on the University of British Columbia campus was conducted to determine the environmental impacts related to its manufacturing and construction. Eight impact categories were considered including global warming potential, weighted resource use and fossil fuel consumption. This study did not include the impacts associated with operating energy, maintenance or end-of-life. This is one study in a series of studies on three sports facilities, the others being the Richmond Olympic Oval and the old Thunderbird Arena on the same site as the DMTSC. DMTSC is a sports arena with two skating rinks and up to 7500 seats. A third skating rink remains from the old Thunderbird Arena and is attached to the West side of the building. The DMTSC is currently home to the UBC Thunderbirds Ice Hockey Team and played a large role in the 2010 Winter Olympic Games as a venue for Ice Hockey and Sledge Hockey. DMTSC is a primarily concrete building. Several of the most common materials include PVC membranes, concrete blocks, foam polyisocyanurate, 30MPa concrete and steel rebar. On-Screen Takeoff Pro was used to quantify all the building materials and the Athena Impact Estimator was used to calculate the associated impacts. Assumptions were required in several stages, and these are documented and accounted for in this report. Over 48 million kg of CO2 equivalent were created in the manufacture and construction of the DMTSC and over 23 million kg of weighted resources. [Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Coordinator about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report.”]

Item Media

Item Citations and Data

Rights

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International