Co-production of energy use and carbon emission reductions in building environmental assessment

Abstract

Building Environmental Assessment (BEA) has been increasingly utilized in low carbon building design as a structured approach to evaluating alternative design solutions. Energy use and relevant carbon emission are two most important aspects of BEA schemes. However, almost all BEA schemes only allow credits to energy use and carbon emission reductions to certain levels, which are far below the net zero standards promoted in many countries as a government climate change policy. Any interaction between energy use and carbon reductions is largely unknown. The aim of this paper is thus to explore the co-production between energy use and carbon emission reductions in order to support the delivery of buildings towards net zero energy and net zero carbon in tandem. This paper first examines the weights of the energy use and carbon emission related criteria in selected typical BEA schemes. The paper then drawing on the case of Hong Kong traces the evolution of such weights in BEA during the period 1996-2015 since BEA was first introduced in Hong Kong. The scenario of zero carbon was used to forecast the trend of the weights’ evolution using the industry life cycle theory combined with linear, polynomial and ladder functions. The results show that the use of ladder function can best describe the possible trend of the weights of energy use and carbon emission reductions criteria in BEA, while linear and polynomial functions are more applicable if emerging low-carbon technologies are popularly adopted. The findings suggest that the coproduction existing between energy use and carbon emission reductions can accelerate the transition of buildings towards net zero energy and zero carbon.