Life cycle study of different constructive solutions for building enclosures

•Nowadays, Spanish regulations consider only some aspects of a building life cycle for energy certifications•To select the right materials is necessary to take into account the whole value chain on the construction process•In complete LCA of the enclosures, the building use stage is the most relevant. It represents about the 75% of all impacts.•In the complete LCA, by incorporating the use scenario, it can be identified the optimal composition to minimize the impacts.•The proposed methodology can establish scientific base for future regulations in energy specifications for buildings. [Display omitted] The construction sector must advance in a more sustainable way and to achieve this goal, the application of global methodologies is needed. These methodologies should take into account all life stages of a building: planning, design, construction, use and demolition. The quantity and variety of the materials used in building construction condition the buildings' environmental and energy impacts. Life Cycle Assessment offers a standardized framework to evaluate the environmental loads of a product, process or activity. This work aims to demonstrate the feasibility of using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to select facilities in the construction sector, which minimize environmental and energy impacts. To facilitate the understanding of the proposed methodology, a comparative LCA is performed, to determine the type of thermal insulating material in a double sheet ceramic façade and its thickness, which allows reducing the environmental impacts associated to the enclosure. The three most used enclosure types used in the city of Malaga (Spain) have been selected for this study. The results show the adequacy of the procedure used.