Recently I have just finished my environmental science assignment, well it was a group assignment but I was in charge of the M & E Mechanical and Electricity part, so part of it I highlighted BEI Building Energy Index. I typed a total of nearly 5k words and thanks to Schneider Energy Conference I went 2 years ago which I got important information on Energy Management Systems EMC, also thanks to MGBC Malaysia Green Building Confederation where I got these slides from them earlier on in another conference.
EPI or Energy Performance Index indicates the specific energy usage of a building. It is basically the ratio of total energy used to the total built-up area. This total energy used includes both purchased electricity as well as that generated on-site but excludes renewable sources like solar photovoltaic etc. The total built-up area excludes basement and parking areas. EPI is calculated after completion of one year of operation with full occupancy of the building and is measured in units of kWh/SQ m/year.
Above is the illustration by PTM on the BEI of an office building in Malaysia. The cumulative percentile suggests lesser than 30% achieve BEI lesser than 200 kWh/m2/year. The Average Malaysian Office building has a BEI of 250 kWh/m22/year, which is also a far cry above MS1525 which is the code of Energy Efficiency where suggests 220 max for BEI.
The Illustration of the left diagram suggests that GEO Green Energy Office building will have a negative BEI as their solar grid would produce more energy demand than the building needs. This is indeed a recent revolution to the building industry as it is able to also generate electricity back into the main grid network.
BEI is also part of the important assessment tool in GBI. It appears under the category Energy Efficiency which it comes with higher points if a BEI score is lower. The benefit of the scoring system of GBI aims to encourage users to do their best in achieving better scores but rather past or failing scores.
The diagram above compares the BEI rate and also the different standards with the energy Savings percentage and incremental construction cost. The current BEI for the building will be high due to the dependency of light and HVAC in regardless of the surrounding climatic relations to the Internal Environmental Quality. Furthermore, it’s a great mistake that the Architect’s intention, in this case, Dr. Ken Yeang does not communicate with the users which added on the partition which deteriorated the building daylight distribution.
Public perception on the Paradigm Shift in Architecture
The pace is taking in for the public to understand more about the home they are living in and the built environment around them. As much as the building industry has something good to offer, but the end users must understand this more as the demand depends on them very much. Most of them are still very much concern on the ROI Return of Investment rate of the earlier huge amount of money invested into Green technology, and some of them simply don’t have the capital for such investment in the head start.
As stated by MGBC, the market perception needs to be driven towards higher performance green buildings. It is estimated that today only 70-80% buildings obey UBBL while 10% do not obey such laws, mostly due to the reasons of lack of enforcements and also some rural area buildings unable to comply with the standards. Nevertheless, with the determination to cut down Malaysia’s Carbon emission as much as 40% as what our prime minister has promised at COP17 , MGBC hopes to see that effort being done in the building industry too.
And also in the public, it seems that improving EE is highest being sought. This is most probably due to the ability of proven ROI compared to others where they do not really see the return on investment financially.
A research did also shown that it is a benefit to be environmentally conscious on your property because the environmental value will be added, the environmental risk will be reduced, and also higher resale value as your marketability will be increased.
reference please. thanks