Investigating the Returns of Existing Building Commissioning as Part of the LEED for Existing Buildings Rating System PDF Download

Author: Alaine S. Duffy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Author: KlingStubbins
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 047091596X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Architecture, Sustainable Design A comprehensive book on the sustainable design of research laboratories Today's research laboratories are complex and difficult building types to design, and making them sustainable adds more obstacles. Written by members of the well-known firm KlingStubbins, under the guidance of its Directors of Laboratory Planning, Engineering, and Sustainability, Sustainable Design of Research Laboratories represents a multidisciplinary approach to addressing these challenges. With the needs of architects, engineers, construction professionals, and facility owners in mind, this book provides a road map for sustainable planning, design, construction, and operations. The book is valuable both to experienced laboratory designers seeking guidance on sustainable strategies, as well as professionals versed in sustainable design who want insight into laboratory applications. With content rich in guidance on performance strategies, even the most technically oriented reader will find valuable lessons inside. This book: Focuses on the links between best sustainable practices and the specific needs of research laboratories Provides a number of case studies of the best contemporary sustainably designed labs, with a focus on architecture and engineering Explores the challenges in applying rating systems, including LEED, to laboratory buildings Examines unique considerations of sustainable approaches in leased and renovated laboratories Includes contributions by experts on approaches to integrated design, site design, programming, and commissioning This important book shows how theoretical ideas can be applied to real-life laboratory projects to create healthier and more efficient research environments.

Author: Jukka Heinonen
Publisher: MDPI
ISBN: 3036503625
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Ongoing urbanization and ever-growing harmful environmental impacts from urban areas necessitate a sustainability transformation in cities. However, cities are also centers of wealth creation and consumption, which both drive environmental degradation. It is clear that cities need to re-establish themselves as low-energy/low-carbon systems, but the transformation is complex in many ways and time is running out. This Special Issue, “Energy Efficient Cities of Today and Tomorrow”, seeks to provide a more profound understanding of the future energy requirements of urban areas and low-energy and low-carbon cities. The published papers range from macro-level assessments of cities manifesting themselves as forerunners in their environmental work to micro-level studies of pro-environmental attitudes and their impacts on individual emissions, a carbon footprint impacts of sharing of goods and services.

Author: Walter T. Grondzik
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470112972
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Commissioning is coming of age. Savvy building owners have adopted commissioning as an effective way to improve the facility acquisition process. Green building initiatives have embraced commissioning as a way of assuring quality in the delivery of high-performance buildings. This long-established quality control process for building mechanical systems is emerging as a broader construction management tool improving nearly all aspects of a project. What exactly is this thing called commissioning? Principles of Building Commissioning answers this fundamental question with the first all-inclusive, practical guide to the application of the principles of commissioning. The book clarifies the underlying philosophy of commissioning: the why, what, when, and who of this process. Shaped by the ASHRAE Guideline 0 view of the world of commissioning, Building Commissioning: Maps out the territory of commissioning Outlines its defining characteristics Explains its flow of processes Demystifies its documentation Making the fundamentals of commissioning accessible to all parties—building owners and operators, architects and engineers, users and suppliers—who may be called upon to join the commissioning team for a particular project, Building Commissioning serves as the professional's road map to the commissioning process, from the predesign phase through occupancy.

Author: US Green Building Council
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781932444629
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Author: Giuliano Dall’O’
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1447150643
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Energy audits have multiple goals including reducing energy consumption, managing costs and environmental impact. Improving the energy performance of existing buildings through energy retrofit measures is a great opportunity for developing sustainability in our structures and developing a green building economy. Green Energy Audit of Buildings considers this opportunity with a new and modern interpretation of the classic methodologies. This comprehensive guide to green energy audits integrates energy audit and LEED® methodologies to focus on energy and environment as strategic elements. In addition to these methodologies, Green Energy Audit of Buildings includes 45 check-list for field surveys and 97 technical sheets of possible energy retrofit actions that can be applied to existing real-world cases. Covering both the technical and economical points of view, Green Energy Audit of Buildings provides a comprehensive understanding and method for analyzing buildings and facilities in order to promote sustainability. Engineers, architects, energy assessors and mangers in charge of building maintenance will all find this a key reference as well as lecturers, students and researchers looking to develop their understanding of sustainable buildings.

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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The aim of commissioning new buildings is to ensure that they deliver, if not exceed, the performance and energy savings promised by their design. When applied to existing buildings, commissioning identifies the almost inevitable 'drift' from where things should be and puts the building back on course. In both contexts, commissioning is a systematic, forensic approach to quality assurance, rather than a technology per se. Although commissioning has earned increased recognition in recent years - even a toehold in Wikipedia - it remains an enigmatic practice whose visibility severely lags its potential. Over the past decade, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has built the world's largest compilation and meta-analysis of commissioning experience in commercial buildings. Since our last report (Mills et al. 2004) the database has grown from 224 to 643 buildings (all located in the United States, and spanning 26 states), from 30 to 100 million square feet of floorspace, and from $17 million to $43 million in commissioning expenditures. The recorded cases of new-construction commissioning took place in buildings representing $2.2 billion in total construction costs (up from 1.5 billion). The work of many more commissioning providers (18 versus 37) is represented in this study, as is more evidence of energy and peak-power savings as well as cost-effectiveness. We now translate these impacts into avoided greenhouse gases and provide new indicators of cost-effectiveness. We also draw attention to the specific challenges and opportunities for high-tech facilities such as labs, cleanrooms, data centers, and healthcare facilities. The results are compelling. We developed an array of benchmarks for characterizing project performance and cost-effectiveness. The median normalized cost to deliver commissioning was $0.30/ft2 for existing buildings and $1.16/ft2 for new construction (or 0.4% of the overall construction cost). The commissioning projects for which data are available revealed over 10,000 energy-related problems, resulting in 16% median whole-building energy savings in existing buildings and 13% in new construction, with payback time of 1.1 years and 4.2 years, respectively. In terms of other cost-benefit indicators, median benefit-cost ratios of 4.5 and 1.1, and cash-on-cash returns of 91% and 23% were attained for existing and new buildings, respectively. High-tech buildings were particularly cost-effective, and saved higher amounts of energy due to their energy-intensiveness. Projects with a comprehensive approach to commissioning attained nearly twice the overall median level of savings and five-times the savings of the least-thorough projects. It is noteworthy that virtually all existing building projects were cost-effective by each metric (0.4 years for the upper quartile and 2.4 years for the lower quartile), as were the majority of new-construction projects (1.5 years and 10.8 years, respectively). We also found high cost-effectiveness for each specific measure for which we have data. Contrary to a common perception, cost-effectiveness is often achieved even in smaller buildings. Thanks to energy savings valued more than the cost of the commissioning process, associated reductions in greenhouse gas emissions come at 'negative' cost. In fact, the median cost of conserved carbon is negative - -$110 per tonne for existing buildings and -$25/tonne for new construction - as compared with market prices for carbon trading and offsets in the +$10 to +$30/tonne range. Further enhancing the value of commissioning, its non-energy benefits surpass those of most other energy-management practices. Significant first-cost savings (e.g., through right-sizing of heating and cooling equipment) routinely offset at least a portion of commissioning costs - fully in some cases. When accounting for these benefits, the net median commissioning project cost was reduced by 49% on average, while in many cases they exceeded the direct value of the energy savings. Commissioning also improves worker comfort, mitigates indoor air quality problems, increases the competence of in-house staff, plus a host of other non-energy benefits. These findings demonstrate that commissioning is arguably the single-most cost-effective strategy for reducing energy, costs, and greenhouse gas emissions in buildings today. Energy savings tend to persist well over at least a 3- to 5-year timeframe, but data over longer time horizons are not available. It is thus important to 'Trust but Verify, ' and indeed the field is moving towards a monitoring-based paradigm in which instrumentation is used not only to confirm savings, but to identify opportunities that would otherwise go undetected. On balance, we view the findings here as conservative, in the sense that they underestimate the actual performance of projects when all costs and benefits are considered. They underestimate the technical potential for a scenario in which best practices are applied.

Author: Jean Carroon
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470882158
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Sustainable Preservation takes a nuanced look at the hundreds of choices that adaptive reuse requires architects to make—from ingenious ways to redeploy existing structural elements to time-honored techniques for natural ventilation to creation of wetlands that restore a site's natural biological functions. In addition, Sustainable Preservation presents 50 case studies of projects—schools, houses, offices, stores, museums, and government buildings—that set new standards for holistic approaches to adaptive reuse and sustainability. The author covers design issues, from building location to lighting systems, renewable power options, stormwater handling, and building envelope protection and integrity. The book also reviews operational issues, including materials choices for low lifetime maintenance, green housekeeping, and indoor air quality.

Author: Meenal Jain
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Sustainable Development is one of the biggest challenges in today's scenario. Development cannot subsist on a deteriorating environmental resource base; the environment cannot be protected when growth leaves out of account the costs of environmental destruction. Construction is an essential part of any country's infrastructure and industrial development. The way we design, build, and operate buildings has negative impact on people and families as buildings use resources such as energy, water, generate waste and emit potentially harmful atmospheric emissions which are ultimately contributing to climate change. Buildings account for more than one third of total energy use and its associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across the world. At the same time, this sector has the largest potential for cutting GHG emissions responsible for global warming. Thus, it is imminent to go in for green buildings which would bring in energy efficiency and reduce the carbon footprint of the building sector, thereby reducing the negative health impacts on families. In developing countries like India, there is a huge stock of existing buildings that are not so efficient and thus, there is an immense potential for energy efficiency measures in the country. Also, considering the current economic challenges, retrofitting an existing building can be more cost effective than building a new facility. Worldwide, a variety of assessment programs have been developed around environmental and energy impacts of buildings. The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System, developed by the U.S. Green Building Council, provides a suite of standards for environmentally sustainable construction. The LEED for Existing Buildings (LEED-EB) is intended to provide the existing building stock an entry point into the LEED certification process. It has become an important benchmark of sustainable building operations and maintenance. But still, there are only a handful of people concerned about making their existing set-up green. The present paper, thus, throws light on the hindrances and catalysts associated with LEED-EB as a tool for greening of existing buildings in India. Case study method was adopted to have a better understanding of the processes involved in greening of existing buildings. The study was undertaken in India in two buildings, namely Paharpur Business Centre & Software Technology Incubator Park, New Delhi (registered under LEED-EB at the time of data collection) and L&T ECC Division - EDRC Building, Chennai, (certified under LEED-EB), and case studies were developed for the same. Hindrances and catalysts associated with LEED-EB were studied from the perspective of project managers, architects and green building consultants associated with the selected case studies. For the purpose of data collection, Questionnaire and Interview Schedule were used. The tool was administered on some other green building consultants who were not associated with LEED-EB projects to get a wider perspective on the hindrances and catalysts associated with the process as they have a major role in the construction of the building and it is imperative to take their viewpoint on the greening process in terms of the hindrances that they face or the catalysts, which they feel, can accelerate this process of greening the existing buildings. On analyzing the data, Prestige, image and reduction in operational costs were found to be major catalysts behind LEED-EB. Better rental value, social responsibility, Improved Indoor Environmental Quality emerged as catalysts with medium and minor importance. The major hindrances were found to be high renovation costs, difficulty in meeting prerequisites and unavailability of the required data for LEED-EB submission. Some hindrances with medium and minor importance were resistance to make changes in the existing buildings, lack of skilled professionals, difficulty in retrofitting, lack of awareness among the stakeholders, lack of technology and no immediate benefit. Adopting the green initiatives in the existing buildings, including homes, and taking the LEED-EB certification will prove to be a very useful tool in minimizing the negative impact of such a large number of existing buildings on the environment, and in turn, on the health of the people residing in them. The catalysts being revealed by the study need to be made overt and hindrances which have been brought forth by the study can be worked upon so that LEED-EB certification gains momentum and the stakeholders and families start taking initiatives to give the country a sustainable path towards a green built environment. The hindrances like high costs, difficult prerequisites and such can be made easier by more efficient technologies so that this process of greening of existing buildings gains momentum in the country.

Author: Sam McBane Mulford
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1591587816
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
While there is a broad spectrum of ecological sophistication within libraries nationwide and some regions are at the forefront of sustainable of sustainable design and operations, others are just beginning or have yet to integrate materials recycling into their daily practice. A few jurisdictions are mandating LEED certified buildings and carbon-neutral practices, while others do not yet have these concepts on their radars.