Refining WLC Benchmark Strategies for Italy’s Building Sector: The Role of Seismic Zoning and Dataset Specificity

The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) requires all EU Member States to establish Whole Life Carbon (WLC) benchmarks by 2030. While progress is being made across Europe, a comprehensive and standardised national methodology remains absent in Italy, raising broader questions about how to ensure comparability of WLC assessments across diverse territorial contexts. Italy represents a particularly complex case, as its building stock is regulated simultaneously by seismic zoning and climatic zoning, complicating the definition of representative archetypes. This study applies Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to a prototypical residential building in Tuscany, testing scenarios that vary by seismic risk and exposure conditions. Results show that structural components dominate impacts, accounting for approximately 60% of total Global Warming Potential (GWP), and that outcomes are highly sensitive to both location and data source. These findings underscore the importance of data granularity and context-specific modelling in developing robust benchmarks. The novelty of this work lies in proposing a framework that integrates seismic and climatic factors into archetype selection, while also emphasising the adoption of nationally tailored datasets to improve accuracy and policy relevance. By situating the Italian case within the wider European debate, the paper contributes to the urgent task of establishing robust, comparable, and context-sensitive WLC benchmarks that can guide both national regulation and EU-wide decarbonisation strategies.