Narrowing the energy performance gap in non-domestic buildings with aspirational sustainability targets
| The non-domestic building sector has in recent years witnessed a boom in the number of ostensibly ‘green’ buildings certified under the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Methodology (BREEAM) and similar rating schemes. Despite the proliferation of aspirationally sustainable building designs, the actual energy performance of certified buildings is generally little better and sometimes worse than the building stock average. The actual energy consumption of non- domestic buildings is typically 1.5 to 5 times greater than designer estimates, resulting in a phenomenon termed the ‘energy performance gap.’
One of the central contributing factors to the energy performance gap is the restricted scope of energy estimate, based around so-called ‘regulated’ loads, so named because of their frequent inclusion in national building regulations. The result of regulation is the near universal exclusion of ‘unregulated’ loads such as office equipment, plug loads, lifts, catering and IT servers from energy estimates. For an unbiased quantification of the performance gap, it is necessary to develop estimates for these unregulated loads or to exclude such loads from the actual consumption comparison. Findings from energy-focussed Building Performance Evaluation of the case study building and associated development context are consolidated to produce recommendations for Estate anagement. |