Energy Efficiency in High-rise Office Buildings: An Appraisal of its Adoption in Lagos, Nigeria

Abstract

High-rise office buildings are naturally energy-intensive as energy is required in large quantities to run modern building services and to power equipment needed for a hitch-free operation of the buildings. It was found in studied literature that maintaining good indoor environmental quality through air-conditioning, lighting and powering of office equipment contribute the most to an office building’s total energy consumption. Hence, over time, various strategies have been employed to reduce the intense energy demand in high-rise office buildings. This paper adopted the use of both literature review and case study methods. The paper identifies the key energy efficiency strategies that have been successfully deployed in high-rise office buildings using the literature review approach. Also, case studies were conducted on three relatively new high-rise office buildings in Lagos, Nigeria by evaluating them against the background of the best practices in energy efficiency. The study found that deployment of energy efficiency strategies in high-rise office buildings in the study area is still very low especially in the areas of building orientation, building envelope design and the use of renewable energy. However, the use of day-lighting techniques and sustainable lighting systems are quite prominent in the office buildings studied. The study underscores the need to make high-rise office buildings more sustainable through energy efficiency strategies across the whole building life cycle of design, construction, use and end of life.