A review on contemporary computational programs for Building's life-cycle energy consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions assessment: An empirical study in Australia

One of the greatest challenges faced by humanity is the impact on climate due to human activity. Among the most prominent of these activities is the construction of buildings. As time and technology progress, the need for more efficient and environmentally-friendly processes and materials is gaining favor among the general population. In line with this, various government protocols have been implemented which have led to development of various software applications that assist in designing better buildings. However, the reach of these applications is limited owing to the cost and expertise needed to actually use these software applications. For instance, architects have multiple tools at their disposal for designing an energy efficient building. But most of these tools are costly to operate, time-consuming and require extensive and software-specific training. This has a greater impact in the initial stages of design, where the amount of data is very limited. The focus of this paper is to develop a plugin for SketchUp ® , which is the CAD design software most commonly used by architects, so as to give insight into building energy consumption during the initial design stages. The challenge is to develop a calculation methodology that is sufficiently accurate, requires very little data from the user, requires no prior training to use, and consumes less time than the state of the art simulation methods. The main component of energy consumption modeled using the developed software is the Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) operation. The HVAC system is modeled using design and analysis methods developed by ASHRAE (Radiant Time Series), coupled with real-life time series solar data from NSRDB. This toolset will help architects evaluate design features like the placement and size of fenestration, materials for construction, building orientation, and more, to enable early design decisions to improve the building's lifecycle energy consumption.

Energy use and related greenhouse gas emissions of buildings have a significant effect on the environment. To reduce energy consumption in buildings, it is important to understand energy use occurring across the building life cycle. While previous studies have shown the significance of both the energy required for building operation as well as the energy embodied in initial building construction, an understanding of the total energy embodied in replacement materials over a building's life is not as well developed. One of the key factors affecting this ‘recurring’ embodied energy is the service life of materials. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between the service life of materials and the life cycle energy demand associated with contemporary residential buildings in Australia. The initial embodied energy, operational energy and recurrent embodied energy of a detached residential building were calculated with material service life values based on average figures obtained from the literature. These values were then varied to reflect the extent of service life variability likely for a selection of the main building materials and recurring embodied energy recalculated for each scenario. Selected materials of the building were then replaced with commonly used alternatives and the building's initial and recurrent embodied energy recalculated for a range of materials service life scenarios. The results from this initial study indicate that the service life of materials can have a considerable effect on total energy demand associated with a building over its life. This demonstrates the need for further clarity around the service life of materials and the importance of considering the durability of materials when designing and managing buildings for improved energy efficiency. Results from this study also suggest the importance of including the recurrent embodied energy of buildings in building life cycle energy analyses, which in this case represented between 19 and 31% of the life cycle energy of the building as built and 21 and 34% with the use of alternative materials.

Building energy consumption (BEC) is very important for the environmental sustainability. Because of complexity and variety of building energy consumption, to achieve building energy consumption optimisation, especially for building life-cycle (BLC), multiple objectives have to be satisfied. In this paper, a novel mathematical model for BLC energy consumption assessment is formalised, a novel algorithm for optimisation of BLC energy consumption is developed by improving the multi-objective ant colony optimisation (MACO). In the algorithm, the estimation mechanism of Pareto optimal solution and the update rule of pheromone are derived. An efficacious optimisation solution for BLC energy consumption and an innovative application of MACO algorithm in the building energy efficiency area are presented in the paper.

Owners, architects, and engineers are highly concerned about the sustainability and energy performance of proposed buildings. Evaluating and analyzing the potential energy consumption of buildings at the conceptual design stage is very helpful for designers when selecting the design alternative that leads to a more energy efficient facility. Building Information Modeling (BIM) assists designers assess different design alternatives at the conceptual stage of a building life so that effective energy strategies are attained within the green building constraints. As well, at that stage, designers can select the right type of building materials that have great effect on the building's life cycle energy consumption and operating costs. The aim of this paper is to propose an integrated method that links BIM, energy analysis, and cost-estimating tools with the green building certification system. The successful development of the proposed method helps owners and designers evaluate design alternatives, taking into consideration the sustainability constraints in an efficient and timely manner. BIM's tool is customized to allow its integration with the energy analysis application to identify the potential gain or loss of energy for the building, detect and evaluate its sustainability based on the U.S. or Canadian Green Building Council (USGBC or CaGBC) rating systems, and approximately estimate the costs of construction early at the conceptual design stage. An actual building project is used to illustrate the workability and capability of the proposed method.

Study on dual-objective optimization method of life cycle energy consumption and economy of office building based on HypE genetic algorithm

In the era of big data processing, the type and scale of human society data are increasing rapidly. Data processing gradually transformed from the traditional simple objects into a basic social resource. Along with the technology development of expansion and storage of massive complex data, manage building information has gradually become possible. For a long time, building life cycle assessment(BLCA) of energy consumption is an important issue in the field of sustainable development and green building. However, the BLCA is facing huge amounts of data processing, which makes the subject remained in theory. The emergence and development of big data technology and building information model (BIM) provide effective tool for building a full life cycle energy assessment. This paper summarized the features of building life cycle energy consumption(BLCEC) data, proposed the method of information exchange and integration management by BIM, and ultimately utilize cloud computing technology to achieve wide-area BLC energy data management. It provides a broader vision for future Big data application studies.

Aluminum production is a major energy consumer and important source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions globally. Estimation of the energy consumption and GHG emissions caused by aluminum production in China has attracted widespread attention because China produces more than half of the global aluminum. This paper conducted life cycle (LC) energy consumption and GHG emissions analysis of primary and recycled aluminum in China for the year 2020, considering the provincial differences on both the scale of self-generated electricity consumed in primary aluminum production and the generation source of grid electricity. Potentials for energy saving and GHG emissions reductions were also investigated. The results indicate that there are 157,207 MJ of primary fossil energy (PE) consumption and 15,947 kg CO2-eq of GHG emissions per ton of primary aluminum ingot production in China, with the LC GHG emissions as high as 1.5–3.5 times that of developed economies. The LC PE consumption and GHG emissions of recycled aluminum are very low, only 7.5% and 5.3% that of primary aluminum, respectively. Provincial-level results indicate that the LC PE and GHG emissions intensities of primary aluminum in the main production areas are generally higher while those of recycled aluminum are lower in the main production areas. LC PE consumption and GHG emissions can be significantly reduced by decreasing electricity consumption, self-generated electricity management, low-carbon grid electricity development, and industrial relocation. Based on this study, policy suggestions for China’s aluminum industry are proposed. Recycled aluminum industry development, restriction of self-generated electricity, low-carbon electricity utilization, and industrial relocation should be promoted as they are highly helpful for reducing the LC PE consumption and GHG emissions of the aluminum industry. In addition, it is recommended that the central government considers the differences among provinces when designing and implementing policies.

This article aims at realizing optimal building energy consumption in its whole life cycle, and develops building life cycle energy consumption model (BLCECM), as well as optimizes the model by Ant Colony Algorithm (ACA). Aiming at the complexity and multi-objective principle of building life cycle energy consumption, this research tries to modify Pareto Ant Colony Algorithm (PACA), making it fit the needs of finding solution to least energy consumption in a building’s whole life cycle. In the initial stage of ant colony constructing solution, each objective weighing is defined randomly, which improves the optimal determination mechanism of Pareto solution, perfects the renovation principle of pheromone, and finally realize the goal of optimization. This research is a innovative application of ACA in building energy-saving area, and it provides definite as well as practical calculation method for building energy consumption optimization in terms of a whole life cycle.

ABSTRACTThe Ratio of Exergy consumption to Energy consumption (REXE) of the building is defined in the paper. The building life cycle REXELC provides a full understanding of high-quality energy consumption during the building life cycle. It is proposed as a new thermodynamic parameter to evaluate the building life cycle energy efficiency. It also can be applied as a simplified way to calculate the building life cycle exergy consumption. Five public buildings in China are taken as the study cases. The energy consumption, exergy consumption, and cost per construction area of the five cases are calculated to study the parameter REXELC. It is concluded that the building life cycle REXELC mainly depends on the energy consumption proportion and REXE of the building material’s production stage and building running stage. The economic analysis of the buildings shows that the building with too large or too small REXELC would not be the economic one. At last 2 mathematical regression models are established to investigate the relation between building life cycle energy consumption and REXELC. According to the regression model, all the buildings can be divided into four zones. The REXELC would be an important instruction in optimizing the design of building envelope.

Minimising the life cycle energy of buildings: Review and analysis

Life cycle energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of urban residential buildings in Guangzhou city

The building energy consumption is one of the biggest components of energy consumption in China. Based on the building life cycle energy consumption theory, this paper proposed a modified model, which extra considered the influence of building planning, design and building materials’ recycle to energy consumption. This paper analyzed every building stage’s energy consumption and provided saving measures. According to the present situation of China, this paper explored new ideas on building energy saving.

Porous geopolymer as a possible template for a phase change material

In recent years, continues development of China urbanization gradually increases the energy consumption of buildings. Studies on the life cycle energy distribution of buildings have practical significance to determine energy policy formulation and adjustment. Based on previous studies and the composition of the life cycle energy consumption of buildings, this article constructed a life-cycle energy consumption model, and established the calculation methods of initial embodied energy, operational energy, reset embodied energy ,dismantle embodied energy and recycle embodied energy separately. Based on ICE material energy data and combined rating per machine per team, this article calculated the life cycle energy distribution of a building in Nanjing. We found that the life cycle energy of buildings obeyed normal distribution, the operational energy accounts for a large proportion and it decreases with the decreased life cycle of buildings. The recovery of operational energy can reduce the proportion of the initial embodied energy. Considering the studies, in order to meet the characteristic of the buildings in China which have short life cycle, we should focus on the development of building materials recycling and reusing.

The growing concern about global climate change extends to different professional sectors. In the building industry, the energy consumption of buildings becomes a factor susceptible to change due to the direct relationship between the outside temperature and the energy needed to cool and heat the internal space. This document aims to estimate the energy consumption of a Minimum Energy Building (MEB) in different scenarios—past, present, and future—in the subtropical climate typical of seaside cities in Southern Spain. The building energy consumption has been predicted using dynamic building energy simulation software tools. Projected climate data were obtained in four time periods (Historical, the 2020s, 2050s, and 2080s), based on four emission scenarios defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): B1, B2, A2, A1F1. This methodology has been mathematically complemented to obtain data in closer time frames (2025 and 2030). In addition, different mitigation strategies have been proposed to counteract the impact of climate change in the distant future. The different energy simulations carried on show clearly future trends of growth in total building energy consumption and how current building designers could be underestimating the problem of air conditioning needs in the subtropical zone. Electricity demand for heating is expected to decrease almost completely, while electricity demand for cooling increases considerably. The changes predicted are significant in all scenarios and periods, concluding an increase of between 28–51% in total primary energy consumption during the building life cycle. The proposed mitigation strategies show improvements in energy demands in a range of 11–14% and they could be considered in the initial stages of project design or incorporated in the future as the impact of climate change becomes more pronounced.