Effect of building energy efficiency standards on carbon emission efficiency in commercial buildings

The building sector plays a crucial role in the worldwide shift toward achieving net-zero emissions.Building energy efficiency standards(BEESs)are highly effective policies for reducing carbon emissions.Therefore,exploring the provincial variations in carbon emission efficiency(CEE)in the building sector and identifying the effect of BEESs on CEE is crucial.This study focuses on commercial buildings in China and applies a difference in differences model to evaluate the impact of BEESs on the CEE of commercial buildings.The slacks-based measure–data envelopment analysis model is employed to assess the CEE of commercial buildings in 30 Chinese provinces from 2000 to 2019.Furthermore,heterogeneous tests are used to explore how climate characteristics and economic conditions affect the efficiency of BEESs.The results indicate that BEESs positively influence the CEE of commercial buildings.Specifically,a 1%increase in the intensity of BEESs causes a 0.1484%increase in the CEE of commercial buildings.Moreover,the impact of BEESs is particularly pronounced in the southern and western provinces.This study provides valuable scientific evidence for governments to enhance BEESs implementation.

eQUEST Based Building Energy Modeling Analysis for Energy Efficiency of Buildings

Building energy performance is a function of numerous building parameters.In this study,sensitivity analysis on twenty parameters is performed to determine the top three parameters that have the most significant impact on the energy performance of buildings.Actual data from two fully operational commercial buildings were collected and used to develop a building energy model in the Quick Energy Simulation Tool(eQUEST).The model is calibrated using the Normalized Mean Bias Error(NMBE)and Coefficient of Variation of Root Mean Square Error(CV(RMSE))method.The model satisfies the NMBE and CV(RMSE)criteria set by the American Society of Heating,Refrigeration,and Air-Conditioning(ASHRAE)Guideline 14,Federal Energy Management Program(FEMP),and International Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol(IPMVP)for building energy model calibration.The values of the parameters are varied in two levels,and then the percentage change in output is calculated.Fractional factorial analysis on eight parameters with the highest percentage change in energy performance is performed at two levels in a statistical software JMP.For building A,the top 3 parameters from the percentage change method are:Heating setpoint,cooling setpoint and server room.From fractional factorial design,the top 3 parameters are:heating setpoint(p-value=0.00129),cooling setpoint(p-value=0.00133),and setback control(p-value=0.00317).For building B,the top 3 parameters from both methods are:Server room(pvalue=0.0000),heating setpoint(p-value=0.00014),and cooling setpoint(p-value=0.00035).If the best values for all top three parameters are taken simultaneously,energy efficiency improves by 29%for building A and 35%for building B.

Multi-Time Scale Optimal Scheduling of a Photovoltaic Energy Storage Building System Based on Model Predictive Control

Building emission reduction is an important way to achieve China’s carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals.Aiming at the problem of low carbon economic operation of a photovoltaic energy storage building system,a multi-time scale optimal scheduling strategy based on model predictive control(MPC)is proposed under the consideration of load optimization.First,load optimization is achieved by controlling the charging time of electric vehicles as well as adjusting the air conditioning operation temperature,and the photovoltaic energy storage building system model is constructed to propose a day-ahead scheduling strategy with the lowest daily operation cost.Second,considering inter-day to intra-day source-load prediction error,an intraday rolling optimal scheduling strategy based on MPC is proposed that dynamically corrects the day-ahead dispatch results to stabilize system power fluctuations and promote photovoltaic consumption.Finally,taking an office building on a summer work day as an example,the effectiveness of the proposed scheduling strategy is verified.The results of the example show that the strategy reduces the total operating cost of the photovoltaic energy storage building system by 17.11%,improves the carbon emission reduction by 7.99%,and the photovoltaic consumption rate reaches 98.57%,improving the system’s low-carbon and economic performance.

Plus Energy Buildings:A Numerical Case Study

The feasibility of Plus Energy Building for a sample relevant case is investigated.After a literature review aimed to identify key aspects of this type of buildings,a preliminary evaluation of the thermal performance of a building constructed using conventional material is presented together with a parametric analysis of the impact of typical influential parameters.Solar domestic hot water(SDHW)and photovoltaic systems(PV)are considered in the study.Numerical simulations indicate that for the examined sample case(Beirut in Lebanon)the total annual energy need of conventional building is 87.1 kWh/y.m^(2).About 49%of energy savings can be achieved by improving the building envelope and installing energy efficient technologies.Moreover,about 90%of energy savings in domestic hot water production can be achieved by installing a SDHW system composed of two solar collectors connected in series.Finally,the addition of a grid connected PV array system can significantly mitigate the energy needs of the building leading to an annual excess of energy.

Deep Learning for Multivariate Prediction of Building Energy Performance of Residential Buildings

In the quest to minimize energy waste,the energy performance of buildings(EPB)has been a focus because building appliances,such as heating,ventilation,and air conditioning,consume the highest energy.Therefore,effective design and planning for estimating heating load(HL)and cooling load(CL)for energy saving have become paramount.In this vein,efforts have been made to predict the HL and CL using a univariate approach.However,this approach necessitates two models for learning HL and CL,requiring more computational time.Moreover,the one-dimensional(1D)convolutional neural network(CNN)has gained popularity due to its nominal computa-tional complexity,high performance,and low-cost hardware requirement.In this paper,we formulate the prediction as a multivariate regression problem in which the HL and CL are simultaneously predicted using the 1D CNN.Considering the building shape characteristics,one kernel size is adopted to create the receptive fields of the 1D CNN to extract the feature maps,a dense layer to interpret the maps,and an output layer with two neurons to predict the two real-valued responses,HL and CL.As the 1D data are not affected by excessive parameters,the pooling layer is not applied in this implementation.Besides,the use of pooling has been questioned by recent studies.The performance of the proposed model displays a comparative advantage over existing models in terms of the mean squared error(MSE).Thus,the proposed model is effective for EPB prediction because it reduces computational time and significantly lowers the MSE.

A New Dynamic and Vertical Photovoltaic Integrated Building Envelope for High-Rise Glaze-Facade Buildings

Substantially glazed facades are extensively used in contemporary high-rise buildings to achieve attractive architectural aesthetics.Inherent conflicts exist among architectural aesthetics,building energy consumption,and solar energy harvesting for glazed facades.In this study,we addressed these conflicts by introducing a new dynamic and vertical photovoltaic integrated building envelope(dvPVBE)that offers extraordinary flexibility with weather-responsive slat angles and blind positions,superior architectural aesthetics,and notable energy-saving potential.Three hierarchical control strategies were proposed for different scenarios of the dvPVBE:power generation priority(PGP),natural daylight priority(NDP),and energy-saving priority(ESP).Moreover,the PGP and ESP strategies were further analyzed in the simulation of a dvPVBE.An office room integrated with a dvPVBE was modeled using EnergyPlus.The influence of the dvPVBE in improving the building energy efficiency and corresponding optimal slat angles was investigated under the PGP and ESP control strategies.The results indicate that the application of dvPVBEs in Beijing can provide up to 131%of the annual energy demand of office rooms and significantly increase the annual net energy output by at least 226%compared with static photovoltaic(PV)blinds.The concept of this novel dvPVBE offers a viable approach by which the thermal load,daylight penetration,and energy generation can be effectively regulated.

Country-level meteorological parameters for building energy efficiency in China

Accurate basic data are necessary to support performance-based design for achieving carbon peak and carbon neutral targets in the building sector.Meteorological parameters are the prerequisites of building thermal engineering design,heating ventilation and air conditioning design,and energy consumption simulations.Focusing on the key issues such as low spatial coverage and the lack of daily or higher time resolution data,daily and hourly models of the surface meteorological data and solar radiation were established and evaluated.Surface meteorological data and solar radiation data were generated for 1019 cities and towns in China from 1988 to 2017.The data were carefully compared,and the accuracy was proved to be high.All the meteorological parameters can be assessed in the building sector via a sharing platform.Then,country-level meteorological parameters were developed for energy-efficient building assessment in China,based on actual meteorological data in the present study.This set of meteorological parameters may facilitate engineering applications as well as allowing the updating and expansion of relevant building energy efficiency standards.The study was supported by the National Science and Technology Major Project of China during the 13th Five-Year Plan Period,named Fundamental parameters on building energy efficiency in China,comprising of 15 top-ranking universities and institutions in China.

Impact of mechanical ventilation control strategies based on non-steady-state and steady-state Wells-Riley models on airborne transmission and building energy consumption

Ventilation is an effective solution for improving indoor air quality and reducing airborne transmission.Buildings need sufficient ventilation to maintain a low infection risk but also need to avoid an excessive ventilation rate,which may lead to high energy consumption.The Wells-Riley(WR)model is widely used to predict infection risk and control the ventilation rate.However,few studies compared the non-steady-state(NSS)and steady-state(SS)WR models that are used for ventilation control.To fill in this research gap,this study investigates the effects of the mechanical ventilation control strategies based on NSS/SS WR models on the required ventilation rates to prevent airborne transmission and related energy consumption.The modified NSS/SS WR models were proposed by considering many parameters that were ignored before,such as the initial quantum concentration.Based on the NSS/SS WR models,two new ventilation control strategies were proposed.A real building in Canada is used as the case study.The results indicate that under a high initial quantum concentration(e.g.,0.3 q/m^(3))and no protective measures,SS WR control underestimates the required ventilation rate.The ventilation energy consumption of NSS control is up to 2.5 times as high as that of the SS control.

Energy consumption,indoor environmental quality,and benchmark for office buildings in Hainan Province of China

With rapid economy growth,building energy consumption in China has been gradually increased.The energy consumption and indoor environmental quality of 51 office buildings in Hainan Province,a hot and humid area,were studied through collection of verified data in site visits and field tests.The result revealed that,electricity accounted for 99.79% of the total energy consumption,natural gas 0.17%,and diesel 0.04%.The air conditioning dominated the energy use with a share of 43.18%,equipment in the particular areas 26.90%,equipment in the office rooms 11.95%,lighting system 8.67%,general service system 7.57%,and miscellaneous items 1.73%.Statistical method including six indicators obtained the energy consumption benchmark with upper limit of 98.31 kW-h/m2 and lower limit of 55.26 kW-h/m2.According to ASHRAE standard(comfortable standard) and GB/T 18883-2002(acceptable standard),the indoor environmental quality of 51 sampled office buildings was classified into three ranks:good,normal and bad.With benchmark of building energy consumption combined with indoor environmental quality,it was found that only 3.92% of sampled buildings can be identified as the best performance buildings with low energy consumption and advanced indoor environmental quality,and the buildings classified into normal level accounted for the maximum ratio.

Energy saving effect of building envelope in summer

To explore the energy saving effect of building envelope, the experiments were carried out through a comparison of basic cubicle in summer. Experiments show that if energy efficiency measures are applied only in the external walls and windows, the energy saving cubicles have an average energy efficiency ratio of 27.75% and 27.05% when the air change rates are 1.1 and 1.4 h-1 in summer, with both values being over the standard target value by 25%. And the indoor air temperature of the energy saving cubicle is below that of the basic cubicle. The daily mean temperature difference between the interior surface of insulation wall and no insulation reaches 1.47℃, and the mean temperature difference is up to 8.52℃ between the interior surface and exterior surface of insulating glass and single glass. The two cubicles were simulated for energy consumption using VisualDOE4.0 software under real weather conditions in summer. The results show that the mean deviation is 10.02% between experimental and simulated energy efficiency ratio. The correctness and validity of simulation results of the VisualDOE4.0 software are proved.

Energy and Buildings

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03787788/144 Volume 144,Pages 1-444(1 June 2017)(1)Naturally ventilated double-skin fac,ade in modeling and experiments,P17-29,by Alessandro Dama,Diego Angeli,Olena Kalyanova Larsen Abstract:The modeling activity presented in this work aims at the assessment of a simplified model,named BS model,which

Energy and Buildings

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03787788/148Volume 148,Pages 1-390(1 August 2017)(1)Economic and environmental analysis of energy renovation packages for European office buildings,P155-165,by Marcus Gustafsson,Chiara Dipasquale,Stefano Poppi,Alessandro Bellini,Roberto Fedrizzi,Chris Bales,Fabian Ochs,

A New Type of Paper-frame Cavernous Material and Its Application in Energy Efficiency in Buildings

This paper introduces a new type of paper-frame cavernous material, which is a made-up hollow material, by using silicate-cinder size to drench and daub. It possesses excellent performances such as light-weight, high-intensity, fire-resistance, sound-insulation, heat-insulation and no-pollution. Composed with concrete materials, a new type of bearing and energy-efficient block can be gained, which is kind of excellent wall materials and has a wide application prospect.

Evaluation of Radon Indoor Pollution Risk in High Efficiency Energy Buildings

The target of achieving high energy efficiency standard in order to comply with the EU Directives is leading to remarkable efforts to improve the performance of the building envelope. Excellent thermal insulation and airtight sealing of leakages are of the utmost importance to fulfil the expected targets. Unfortunately, airtightness produces the negative effect of increasing the indoor concentration of air pollutants like radon. Despite the seriousness of the problem is generally misconceived, long-term exposition to radon is acknowledged to be the second cause of lung cancer after smoke. The paper outlines the implications for the building sector and focuses on design and preventive criteria as well as on mitigation and remedial techniques.

New Building Typologies for Zero Energy Mass Custom Housing(ZEMCH)in More Sustainable Patterns of Development

Conferences and publications on Smart Cities and self-styled ecological buildings such as“Vertical Forests”,“Biophilic”building complexes and other similar are multiplying.But then,in reality,we continue to design as we have always done for the last ninety years:with the consolidated rules and formal solutions of international post-modern composition,in its various forms.The only attentions are(and not always)to super-insulate the envelopes,arrange photovoltaic panels on the roofs,make the systems smart and cover the facades and roofs with appropriate green washing.Even in the awareness that human settlements and cities are extremely complex phenomena,mostly determined by economic and social factors,rather than by conscious typological-settlement choices,perhaps the time has come to acknowledge that the traditional paradigms of design must be changed.First of all,the types of settlements must be renewed,because it is through their optimization that the greatest savings in terms of energy and sustainability can be achieved.The research presented here is the application of a ten-year study that involved the development of net Zero Energy Mass Custom Housing(ZEMCH)in specific context in southern Italy.The Innovation and Transparency of Tenders Environmental Compatibility(ITACA)Assessment Protocol,derived from the Green Building Challenge’s GBTool,was used as a design guide,which is normally used for the assessment and judgment of sustainability at the building scale and not of the urban design.The result is a settlement model in which network of pedestrian,cycle and public transport is fully integrated with adjacent urban areas;effective landscaping connects public and private green and kitchen-gardens/orchards everywhere;buildings are made with new semi-underground typologies;net ZEMCHs are made with local,recyclable materials with low impact or positive energy balance;wastewater and rainwater are collected,in-loco phyto-purified and reused;renewable energies(sun,earth,wind)satisfy remaining necessities,with a minimum of plant interventions.

Construction of building energy conservation incentive policies under government regulation: Based on the subjects' behavior analysis

Building energy efficiency is a long-term strategy to achieve sustainable development, but the inconsistencies of main interests during the implementation lead to the need for government regulation in building energy conservation. Implementation of building energy efficiency of government regulation covers three aspects of construction and involves relevant participators, so the paper analyzes interests and roles of the related subjects in building energy saving, explore the motivations and its conversion mechanism of each player, and dissect the game relationship of associated earnings of developers' and consumers' behaviors selection under government control. Finally, the paper proposes basic requirements of building incentive policies for related subjects under government control to regulate the main behaviors of subjects in building energy efficient buildings and achieve energy efficiency goals and balance of all parties' benefits.

Supply and demand subject behavior of building energy efficiency in market fostering

Consumers and developers are the market transaction subjects which drive the development of building energy efficiency market. High energy prices, unreasonable heating system, information asymmetry of building energy suppress demand of energy efficiency construction; high technical risk and construction cost, nonstandard market restrict the supply of energy efficiency construction. To promote the development of building energy efficiency, we must set up effective incentive policies for both sides of the market transaction, improve the supervisory system, promote the technological progress, build the information sharing platform, so as to achieve the purpose of cultivating and improving the building energy efficiency market system, regulating the behavior of supply and demand subject, building the mutually beneficial and cooperative partnership, and realizing the balance of interests.

Energy and Buildings

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03787788/150Volume 150,Pages 1-640(1 September 2017)(1)Design and experimental evaluation of model predictive control vs.intelligent methods for domestic heating systems,P52-70,by Esmaeel Khanmirza,Ahmad Esmaeilzadeh,Amir Hossein Davaie Markazi Abstract:In this paper,it has been attempted to present a tempera-

Sensibility Analysis of the Brazilian Standards for Energy Efficiency Regarding the Variation of Internal Load Density in Office Buildings in Brazilian Bioclimatic Zones 1 and 7

The RTQ-C （Technical Requirements of Quality for the Energy Performance Level of Commercial Buildings） publication classified the buildings in five efficiency levels. In RTQ-C, the evaluation can be done with two methods： a prescriptive method and a simulation one. This paper aims to identify the sensibility of the prescriptive method RTQ-C regarding the variation of equipment internal load density in office buildings in bioclimatic Zones I and 7 of the Brazilian bioclimatic zoning. The research results show that the building with walls and roof configured to meet specific prerequisites for energy efficiency Levels B and C had a lower consumption than buildings that meet the prerequisites to Level A. The study also showed that buildings with high internal load density of equipment, maximum shape factor and high, with walls and roofs with higher thermal transmittance, have lower power consumption than constructions with an envelope with greater thermal resistance. The increase in internal load density causes an increase in the internal heat generated by the large amount of equipment. In buildings with higher thermal insulation （Level A）, the internal heat is maintained in the environment, causing overheating and the need for an air conditioning system.

A Brief Analysis of Energy Conservation Ways by Building Materials for Ecological Architecture

The development of society and economy in China is bringing growth to all industries. In particular, the development of China’s building industry has attracted much attention. Building materials are an important part of and widely used in the building industry. Energy conservation by building materials has become an inevitable way of sustainable development. Centering on the building industry, this paper mainly discusses in detail the energy conservation ways by ecological architecture and building materials.