scholarly journals Carbon Footprint Reduction through Residential Building Stock Retrofit: A Metro Melbourne Suburb Case Study

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (20) ◽  
pp. 6550
Author(s):  
Seongwon Seo ◽  
Greg Foliente
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Footprint ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Residential Buildings ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Residential Building ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Embodied Energy ◽  
Building Sector ◽  
Building Stock

Since existing residential buildings are a significant global contributor to energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, any serious effort to reduce the actual energy and carbon emissions of the building sector should explicitly address the carbon mitigation challenges and opportunities in the building stock. This research investigates environmentally and economically sustainable retrofit methods to reduce the carbon footprint of existing residential buildings in the City of Greater Dandenong as a case study in Metropolitan Melbourne, Australia. By categorizing energy use into various building age brackets and dwelling types that align with changes in energy regulations, we identified various retrofit prototypes to achieve a targeted 6.5-star and 8-star energy efficiency rating (out of a maximum 10-star rating system). The corresponding operational energy savings through different retrofit options are examined while also considering the quantity of materials required for each option, along with their embodied energy and GHG emissions, thus allowing a more comprehensive lifecycle carbon analysis and exploration of their financial and environmental payback times. Results show that when buildings are upgraded with a combination of insulation and double-glazed windows, the environmental benefits rise faster than the financial benefits over a dwelling’s lifecycle. The size or percentage of a particular dwelling type within the building stock and the remaining lifecycle period are found to be the most important factors influencing the payback periods. Retrofitting the older single detached dwellings shows the greatest potential for lifecycle energy and carbon savings in the case suburb. These findings provide households, industry and governments some guidance on how to contribute most effectively to reduce the carbon footprint of the residential building sector.

scholarly journals LEED Scores of Residential Buildings in Poor Cities: Kabul City Case

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 6959
Author(s):  
Najib Rahman Sabory ◽  
Tomonobo Senjyu ◽  
Adina Hashemi Momand ◽  
Hadya Waqfi ◽  
Nilofar Saboor ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Residential Buildings ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Residential Building ◽  
Green Building ◽  
Building Industry ◽  
Existing Buildings ◽  
Building Sector ◽  
Building Stock ◽  
Water Transportation

Urbanization and technology have proven to be detrimental to the environment. Buildings contribute a significant portion of this damage. This issue motivated governments, builders, engineers, and architects to seek ways to reduce buildings’ environmental footprints. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), is one of the most widely used strategies to ensure energy efficiency and a clean environment in buildings. In Afghanistan, where there are no active regulatory frameworks for energy saving and efficiency for the building sector, it is imperative to promote the transformation of the building industry and practices towards sustainability. In this regard, the role of the residential building sector is of utmost importance due to its major share in the country’s energy consumption and GHG emissions profile. Thus, this study assesses the energy efficiency and environmental impact of existing buildings in Kabul city concerning the LEED rating system. This research suggests practical steps to improve the sustainability of the residential building stock in Kabul city. Robust sets of data on existing residential buildings in Kabul are collected, classified, evaluated, and compared to LEED standards. This research reveals and concludes that most of the existing buildings in Kabul city are in poor conditions and do not meet the minimum requirements to be a candidate for LEED certification. A detailed analysis of the results has led to recommendations on how these buildings could improve to meet the LEED criteria. This is the first study of its kind conducted for Kabul city residential building. Considering the cross-sectoral nature of the building industry, the findings of this study will contribute to many other areas such as water, transportation, ICT, health, energy and the environment.

scholarly journals Strategies to Improve the Energy Performance of Buildings: A Review of Their Life Cycle Impact

Buildings ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (8) ◽  
pp. 105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadia MIRABELLA ◽  
Martin RÖCK ◽  
Marcella Ruschi Mendes SAADE ◽  
Carolin SPIRINCKX ◽  
Marc BOSMANS ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Energy Performance ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Embodied Energy ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Operational Energy

Globally, the building sector is responsible for more than 40% of energy use and it contributes approximately 30% of the global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. This high contribution stimulates research and policies to reduce the operational energy use and related GHG emissions of buildings. However, the environmental impacts of buildings can extend wide beyond the operational phase, and the portion of impacts related to the embodied energy of the building becomes relatively more important in low energy buildings. Therefore, the goal of the research is gaining insights into the environmental impacts of various building strategies for energy efficiency requirements compared to the life cycle environmental impacts of the whole building. The goal is to detect and investigate existing trade-offs in current approaches and solutions proposed by the research community. A literature review is driven by six fundamental and specific research questions (RQs), and performed based on two main tasks: (i) selection of literature studies, and (ii) critical analysis of the selected studies in line with the RQs. A final sample of 59 papers and 178 case studies has been collected, and key criteria are systematically analysed in a matrix. The study reveals that the high heterogeneity of the case studies makes it difficult to compare these in a straightforward way, but it allows to provide an overview of current methodological challenges and research gaps. Furthermore, the most complete studies provide valuable insights in the environmental benefits of the identified energy performance strategies over the building life cycle, but also shows the risk of burden shifting if only operational energy use is focused on, or when a limited number of environmental impact categories are assessed.

scholarly journals Towards Urban Mining—Estimating the Potential Environmental Benefits by Applying an Alternative Construction Practice. A Case Study from Switzerland

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 5041
Author(s):  
Efstathios Kakkos ◽  
Felix Heisel ◽  
Dirk E. Hebel ◽  
Roland Hischier
Keyword(s):  
Impact Category ◽  
Residential Building ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Experimental Unit ◽  
Building Stock ◽  
Urban Mining ◽  
Country Level ◽  
Residential Building Stock ◽  
Construction Practice

Modern cities emerged as the main accumulator for primary and waste materials. Recovery of both types from buildings after demolition/disassembly creates a secondary material stream that could relieve pressure from primary resources. Urban mining represents this circular approach, and its application depends on redefining current construction practice. Through the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology and assuming primary resources as step zero of urban mining, this study estimates the impacts and benefits of conventional versus a circular construction practice applied to various buildings with different parameters and the country-level environmental potential savings that could be achieved through this switch in construction practice—using the increase of the residential building stock in Switzerland between 2012 and 2016 as a case study and key values from the experimental unit “Urban Mining and Recycling”, designed by Werner Sobek with Dirk E. Hebel and Felix Heisel and installed inside the NEST (Next Evolution in Sustainable Building Technologies) research building on the Empa campus in Switzerland. The results exhibit lower total impacts (at least 16% in each examined impact category) at building level and resulting benefits (i.e., 68–117 kt CO2-Eq) at country level over five years, which can be further reduced/increased respectively by using existing or recycled components, instead of virgin materials.

scholarly journals A comparison of greenhouse gas emissions in the residential sector of major Canadian cities

2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 285-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugene A. Mohareb ◽  
Adrian K. Mohareb
Keyword(s):  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Energy Demand ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Housing Stock ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Residential Building ◽  
Carbon Intensity ◽  
Building Stock ◽  
Residential Sector ◽  
Residential Building Stock

One of the most significant sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Canada is the buildings sector, with over 30% of national energy end-use occurring in buildings. Energy use must be addressed to reduce emissions from the buildings sector, as nearly 70% of all Canada’s energy used in the residential sector comes from fossil sources. An analysis of GHG emissions from the existing residential building stock for the year 2010 has been conducted for six Canadian cities with different climates and development histories: Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax. Variation across these cities is seen in their 2010 GHG emissions, due to climate, characteristics of the building stock, and energy conversion technologies, with Halifax having the highest per capita emissions at 5.55 tCO2e/capita and Montreal having the lowest at 0.32 tCO2e/capita. The importance of the provincial electricity grid’s carbon intensity is emphasized, along with era of construction, occupancy, floor area, and climate. Approaches to achieving deep emissions reductions include innovative retrofit financing and city level residential energy conservation by-laws; each region should seek location-appropriate measures to reduce energy demand within its residential housing stock, as well as associated GHG emissions.

scholarly journals Automated classification metrics for energy modelling of residential buildings in the UK with open algorithms

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Beck ◽  
Gavin Long ◽  
Doreen S Boyd ◽  
Julian F Rosser ◽  
Jeremy Morley ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Energy Use ◽  
Residential Buildings ◽  
Construction Materials ◽  
Residential Building ◽  
Automated Classification ◽  
Building Stock ◽  
Ordnance Survey ◽  
Built Form ◽  
Energy Modelling ◽  
The City

Estimating residential building energy use across large spatial extents is vital for identifying and testing effective strategies to reduce carbon emissions and improve urban sustainability. This task is underpinned by the availability of accurate models of building stock from which appropriate parameters may be extracted. For example, the form of a building, such as whether it is detached, semi-detached, terraced etc. and its shape may be used as part of a typology for defining its likely energy use. When these details are combined with information on building construction materials or glazing ratio, it can be used to infer the heat transfer characteristics of different properties. However, these data are not readily available for energy modelling or urban simulation. Although this is not a problem when the geographic scope corresponds to a small area and can be hand-collected, such manual approaches cannot be easily applied at the city or national scale. In this article, we demonstrate an approach that can automatically extract this information at the city scale using off-the-shelf products supplied by a National Mapping Agency. We present two novel techniques to create this knowledge directly from input geometry. The first technique is used to identify built form based upon the physical relationships between buildings. The second technique is used to determine a more refined internal/external wall measurement and ratio. The second technique has greater metric accuracy and can also be used to address problems identified in extracting the built form. A case study is presented for the City of Nottingham in the United Kingdom using two data products provided by the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain: MasterMap and AddressBase. This is followed by a discussion of a new categorisation approach for housing form for urban energy assessment.

scholarly journals Developing non-residential building stock archetypes for LCI—a German case study of office and administration buildings

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Buschka ◽  
Julian Bischof ◽  
Christina Meier-Dotzler ◽  
Werner Lang
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Residential Buildings ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Residential Building ◽  
Inventory Analysis ◽  
Building Stock ◽  
Simplified Lca ◽  
Data Gaps

Abstract Purpose To accomplish the national and international climate goals, building renovation and optimisation of their energy and resource efficiency are essential. Thus, reliable information on the building stock (BS) is necessary. Most previous building typologies are focussing on residential buildings and the operational phase. This paper shows the development of a methodology for generating non-residential building (NRB) typologies for life cycle inventory analysis (LCI) of building constructions. Hereby, archetypes of office, administration and department (OAD) buildings are developed, exemplarily for the German NRB stock. The methodology can further be utilised for quantity surveying of urban material stocks, related recycling scenarios and waste management. Furthermore, the exemplarily generated archetypes provide necessary information for the estimation of realistic refurbishment scenarios. Methods Approaches for the development of NRB archetypes, the descriptions of associated building materials and the LCI of BS were analysed and integrated into a methodology. It provides a clear path on the classification in building usage categories and determination of relevant building parameters for conducting LCI studies. Its aim is the creation of NRB typologies, presenting construction materials and building geometry in a useful way for life-cycle assessments (LCA). To demonstrate the methodology’s usability, it is applied to a case study with the sample of 161 OAD buildings, provided by the German NRB database ENOB:dataNWG. In combination with relevant literature on BS archetypes and materials, a sample OAD building typology has been created. Results and discussion Minimum data requirements for conducting simplified LCI calculation of BSs were identified by analysing existing LCA methods, like the German BNB system. Important clusters for developing NRB archetypes were determined: building usage category, building construction types and building age. These data gaps between required information for simplified LCA studies and available information in ENOB:dataNWG were identified, and solutions for closing these data gaps were proposed and tested. Since building archetypes must reflect the overall BS, uncertainties were discussed. The ENOB:dataNWG database was not completed at the time this paper was written, so comprehensive uncertainty analyses are important next steps. Conclusions This methodology development forms the groundwork for creating LCI building typologies for simplified LCA studies. It shows practically how to deal with a BS database and illustrates which typical values can be chosen for closing data gaps. The methodology was tested on an exemplary sample of OAD buildings. Based on this case study, the methodology concept was proven useful for the generation of a NRB typology.

scholarly journals Solar and Green Building Guidelines for Hot Arid Climate in India

2014 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-65
Author(s):  
Tejwant Singh Brar ◽  
Navneet Munoth
Keyword(s):  
Energy Use ◽  
Residential Buildings ◽  
Residential Building ◽  
Green Building ◽  
Green Buildings ◽  
Low Energy ◽  
Embodied Energy ◽  
Arid Climate ◽  
Categorical Analysis ◽  
Hot Arid Climate

Abstract There are, presently, two schools of thought when it comes to designing buildings that promote sustainable development. One school emphasizes materials use and ‘‘green’’ buildings, while the other emphasizes energy use and energy efficient buildings. The promoters of ‘‘green’’ buildings often claim that the reduced energy use during operation of the low energy and solar buildings is counteracted by the increased embodied energy in these buildings. This paper gives categorical analysis of the technologies available for Low energy and green architecture and emphasizes the need to integrate both in residential buildings to of lower the energy use in operation during the lifetime in a residential building in hot arid climate. The results also show that there should be little difference between the approaches of the two schools of thought. The best buildings will generally be those that are both low energy, and ‘‘green’’. This paper also gives policy guidelines to integrate them in the building bye-laws for hot arid climate

scholarly journals Impact of a compartmentalization and ventilation system retrofit strategy on energy use in high-rise residential buildings

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathew Carlsson
Keyword(s):  
Energy Use ◽  
Residential Buildings ◽  
Ventilation System ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Residential Building ◽  
Air Distribution ◽  
High Rise ◽  
Building Enclosure ◽  
Air Tightness ◽  
The Impact

A compartmentalization and in-suite ventilation system (ISVS) retrofit strategy was investigated for an existing high-rise residential building in Vancouver. Computer simulation using EnergyPlus™ was used to examine the impact of the proposed retrofit on heating energy and GHG emissions for the building’s original 1983 condition, and its current condition which incorporates a 2012 enclosure retrofit. Results show annual heating energy decreased by 51% and overall GHG emissions decreased by 29% for the proposed retrofit applied to the building in its current condition. When applied to the building in its original condition, heating energy decreased by 49% and overall GHG emissions decreased by 21%. The main benefit of the proposed retrofit, however, is improved effectiveness of the mechanical ventilation system. Because building enclosure air-tightness improvements can negatively impact air distribution in buildings with pressurized corridor ventilation systems, the proposed retrofit should be applied in combination with, or before, an enclosure retrofit.

scholarly journals Impact of a compartmentalization and ventilation system retrofit strategy on energy use in high-rise residential buildings

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathew Carlsson
Keyword(s):  
Energy Use ◽  
Residential Buildings ◽  
Ventilation System ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Residential Building ◽  
Air Distribution ◽  
High Rise ◽  
Building Enclosure ◽  
Air Tightness ◽  
The Impact

A compartmentalization and in-suite ventilation system (ISVS) retrofit strategy was investigated for an existing high-rise residential building in Vancouver. Computer simulation using EnergyPlus™ was used to examine the impact of the proposed retrofit on heating energy and GHG emissions for the building’s original 1983 condition, and its current condition which incorporates a 2012 enclosure retrofit. Results show annual heating energy decreased by 51% and overall GHG emissions decreased by 29% for the proposed retrofit applied to the building in its current condition. When applied to the building in its original condition, heating energy decreased by 49% and overall GHG emissions decreased by 21%. The main benefit of the proposed retrofit, however, is improved effectiveness of the mechanical ventilation system. Because building enclosure air-tightness improvements can negatively impact air distribution in buildings with pressurized corridor ventilation systems, the proposed retrofit should be applied in combination with, or before, an enclosure retrofit.

scholarly journals A Comprehensive Framework for Standardising System Boundary Definition in Life Cycle Energy Assessments

Buildings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 230
Author(s):  
Hossein Omrany ◽  
Veronica Soebarto ◽  
Jian Zuo ◽  
Ruidong Chang
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Embodied Energy ◽  
Building Energy Efficiency ◽  
System Boundary ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Energy Assessment ◽  
Boundary Definition ◽  
Comprehensive Framework

This paper aims to propose a comprehensive framework for a clear description of system boundary conditions in life cycle energy assessment (LCEA) analysis in order to promote the incorporation of embodied energy impacts into building energy-efficiency regulations (BEERs). The proposed framework was developed based on an extensive review of 66 studies representing 243 case studies in over 15 countries. The framework consists of six distinctive dimensions, i.e., temporal, physical, methodological, hypothetical, spatial, and functional. These dimensions encapsulate 15 components collectively. The proposed framework possesses two key characteristics; first, its application facilitates defining the conditions of a system boundary within a transparent context. This consequently leads to increasing reliability of obtained LCEA results for decision-making purposes since any particular conditions (e.g., truncation or assumption) considered in establishing the boundaries of a system under study can be revealed. Second, the use of a framework can also provide a meaningful basis for cross comparing cases within a global context. This characteristic can further result in identifying best practices for the design of buildings with low life cycle energy use performance. Furthermore, this paper applies the proposed framework to analyse the LCEA performance of a case study in Adelaide, Australia. Thereafter, the framework is utilised to cross compare the achieved LCEA results with a case study retrieved from literature in order to demonstrate the framework’s capacity for cross comparison. The results indicate the capability of the framework for maintaining transparency in establishing a system boundary in an LCEA analysis, as well as a standardised basis for cross comparing cases. This study also offers recommendations for policy makers in the building sector to incorporate embodied energy into BEERs.

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