Energy and carbon performance evaluation for buildings and urban precincts: review and a new modelling concept

With the accelerating pace of urbanisation around the world, the planning, development and operation of buildings and precincts have become increasingly important with respect to energy use and the associated carbon footprint of the modern built environment. Over recent decades, much effort, both in research and in practice, has been devoted to building construction and urban planning for the improvement of energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions. However, the accuracy of modelling and evaluation of energy and carbon performance for buildings and urban precincts remains limited, affected by inadequate energy intensity data and highly integrated building systems, as well as the complex interactions between buildings and the urban eco-system. This paper presents a critical review of current measures and models for representing and assessing life cycle energy as well as associated emissions profiles at both the building and the precinct levels. It also identifies influential factors and explores interactions among buildings, surrounding environment and user behaviours at the urban precinct level by taking a systems perspective. Based on such a review, this study maps out some key challenges for integrating energy and carbon metrics, and finally proposes a precinct-level system boundary definition and an integrated model following systems thinking. The proposed model can facilitate a critical thinking approach about the evaluations of global energy and emissions, and support the quantification of energy consumption and associated emissions for building precinct systems.

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