Module-based renewal planning of energy using products for reducing environmental load and life cycle cost

For products whose environmental load during operation is significant, frequent product renewal could be a better option over the life cycle than longer use with intensive maintenance. However, such frequent renewal could result in an excess consumption of resources. To address such a problem, we propose the concept of module-based renewal in which only the modules that mainly contribute to the energy consumption are replaced. The concept is applied to the air-conditioning system of a commercial building to illustrate the effectiveness of such an approach. The results of a life cycle simulation show that module-based renewal is superior to whole renewal in terms of environmental load, resource consumption, and life cycle cost.