Economic Sustainability Evaluation of Green Residential Projects through Life Cycle Approaches: an International Literature Review

Global climate change is profoundly affecting the survival and development of human beings, and the construction industry is one of the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Residential buildings are the most numerous in the construction market, countries around the world are committed to the development of green buildings for residential uses to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. In many countries, the majority of existing homes are energy inefficient. The development of green, efficient and habitable residential building has become an inevitable trend in the sustainable development of buildings worldwide. Green building construction costs and retrofitting costs are key factors that hinder the promotion of green buildings. The aim of this Master's thesis is to identify how researchers in Europe and China are evaluating green residential building interventions and green retrofitting projects of residential buildings, focusing on the costs and environmental benefits, from a life-cycle perspective through a literature review. The research in this thesis is focused on international publications in Europe and China from the period 2010-2022 that provide a comprehensive assessment of green residential buildings or retrofitting initiatives, mainly from a life cycle perspective, using life cycle costing and life cycle assessment, to study the differences and linkages in the use of economic assessment tools in different countries and regions. 41 publications were selected to confirm the feasibility of the integrated application of economic-environmental assessment tools from a life-cycle perspective in green residential buildings and green retrofitting in different international conditions through an initial analysis of the methodology, year of publication, type of publication, and type of case study, and a further analysis of author keywords and year through the use of bibliometric methods in VOSviewer.