The Green Building concept is very popular worldwide. The adverse impact of construction on the environment significantly promotes the development of the green building concept worldwide. Green ...buildings are generally termed as environmentally friendly buildings. Therefore, over the past several decades, there have been many green building rating tools developed by institutions to evaluate these buildings. However, a majority of the green buildings certified with these rating tools are assessed primarily on their design and construction. The life-cycle of a green building extends beyond these initial phases, with its full benefits becoming more apparent during the operational stages of the building. However, there is a clear lack of green building projects obtaining green certificates that evaluate the operational stages of the building. Therefore, this research aims to identify the barriers preventing the certification of green buildings in their operational stages. Initially, commonly used international green building rating tools were identified and analysed on the evaluation criteria. Following this analysis, Chinese standards on green building evaluation were also discussed in detail. Furthermore, a case study building with three-star certification for the operational stage was incorporated into the analysis. This case study building was analysed with the Chinese standards, namely Chinese evaluation standard green building (ESGB) 2014, along with other international standards such as the Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design Leadership (LEED), the Building Research Establishment's Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM), and Green Star. Structured interviews were also carried out to identify the barriers, while measures to overcome these barriers were also discussed. The inconsistency of government regulations, the inability of the market to protect developers' interests, and the inability to meet technical requirements were identified as the three main barriers.
•Majority of green buildings are certified during the design stage.•Green building certification within the operational stage is to a significant minimum.•Identifying barriers to certify green buildings in operational stage is essential.•Inability of the market to protect developers' interests is one of the main barriers.
By influencing energy consumption, water use, and indoor environment quality, ‘building service systems’ are indispensable to green building. In practice, building services are chosen separately by ...different professions while they are literally interdependent on each other in determining the overall effectiveness and efficiency of green building. In addition, these building services are chosen at the initial stage without necessarily considering their life-cycle costs (LCC). A more holistic view to consider the interdependence of various building services throughout their life cycle is highly desired. Hence, this research aims to examine building services in green building by considering both their interdependence and costs throughout the building life cycle. The Hong Kong BEAM (Building Environmental Assessment Method) Plus is selected for a case study. Initially, the credits related to building services are identified and mapped from the BEAM Plus. Afterwards, LCC of the credits are calculated using the net present value technique. It is discovered that by considering building services' interdependence from a life cycle perspective, the choices of such building services could be much different. A significant proportion of the LCC is related to operation, maintenance and replacement of the building services, which cannot be offset by the savings of green building independently. However, there are benefits such as CO2 reductions, which can be used to make up the LCC if they can be properly monetised. The research provides significant insights to developers and their consultants in choosing cost-effective building services with a view to better realising the value of green building.
•Building services should be considered holistically when calculating the life-cycle cost of various green building options.•Mechanism for monetising the social benefits of GBs is highly desired.•Considering the maintenance costs in green building services during the design stage is essential.
The construction industry has a significant contribution towards numerous adverse environmental impacts. Therefore, green building concept has gained wide recognition. In line with this, numerous ...international green building rating tools have been developed providing a yardstick for measuring green building performance. These rating tools have different credit criteria for evaluating the green building performance. According to the existing literature, there are many researches comparing different green building rating tools on specific credit criteria such as “Energy”. However, there is a clear lack of research on establishing a baseline to develop new green building rating tools and to evaluate existing green building rating tools. Therefore, this research aims to establish key credit criteria based on an extensive literature study and evaluate these criteria based on widely used eight green building rating tools. The comparison analysis is based on a quantitative measure, namely, a normalised score, which is obtained through allocating credit points of selected green building rating tools to the established key credit criteria. The comparison result is presented with radar diagrams and bar charts. This research established seven key credit criteria for these rating tools which are namely (1) Site, (2) Energy, (3) Water, (4) Indoor Environment Quality (IEQ), (5) Material, (6) Waste and pollution, and (7) Management. It is found that ‘Energy’ criterion is the most widely considered key credit criteria and then followed by ‘IEQ’ and ‘Water’ criteria. Apart from that, credit criteria such as ‘Triple bottom line reporting’, ‘Education and awareness’, ‘Economic aspects relating to various costs’, ‘Sustainable designing and planning’ and ‘Stakeholder relations’ are identified as possible credit criteria which can be included in developing the rating tools in future. These key credit criteria can be adopted as a baseline to develop new green building rating tools, and it provides fruitful results to develop the existing tools further.
•Construction Waste Management (CWM) credits are least sought out in green buildings.•To obtain CWM credits, one needs to pay a higher cost ranging from 0.4% to 6%•The number of credits and weightage ...allocated for the CWM related credits are lower.
This research was motivated by the intriguing phenomena across several economies that green building clients/developers are observably lukewarm in pursuing construction waste management (CWM). Recent studies, most of them in a qualitative nature, reported that to obtain CWM-related credits is “costlier” than obtaining credits from other green building aspects such as sites, lighting, and so on. Yet, there is a clear lack of empirical analysis of such cost implications with a view to providing convincing explanation to the phenomena. This research aims to identify the cost implications of achieving CWM-related credits as stipulated in green building rating tools by focusing in Hong Kong. The costs for using materials required for green certification were calculated and compared against conventional materials by introducing a life cycle perspective. It is discovered that to obtain the CWM-related credits, one needs to pay a higher cost ranging from 0.4% to 6%.
Renovation of residential buildings is very common in China. Parallel to the renovations, a significant of renovation waste is generated, majority of which end up in landfills posing significant ...environmental and health hazards. Approximately up to 7.5 million tons of renovation waste is generated annually in China, yet, there is a clear lack of research on renovation waste management. A framework to manage the renovation waste is highly desired. Hence, this research aims to develop a conceptual framework for renovation waste management based on the renovation waste generation rates (RWGRs). Initially, the renovation waste is classified into the five phases of renovation waste generation. The five phases are, ‘layout transformation’, ‘installation engineering’, ‘mason engineering’, ‘carpentry engineering’ and ‘paint engineering’. Once the conceptual framework is developed, it was necessary to quantify the RWGRs. Renovation waste estimation was done on-site by sorting and weighing. It is found that the renovation waste is mainly contributed by concrete blocks, bricks, timber and ceramic tiles. The results obtained from the research study reports that the RWGRs vary between 15.65 kg/m2 and 25.98 kg/m2. The highest RWGRs are reported in ‘layout transformation’ phase. The ‘paint engineering’ phase generates a comparatively small amount, yet toxic waste. The research provides significant insights to developers, project managers, site managers and all the professional working with renovation waste in developing a waste management framework based on the RWGRs.
Green buildings are gaining popularity in Australia with the applications of Green Star rating scheme. However, the credit for using timber materials in the rating scheme, while timber being a ...significantly used material in the fast growing residential construction industry, does not adequately guide designers and builders on the selection of the best timber types for residential applications from the life cycle perspective. This research presents the analysis on the life cycle cost of timber materials in their various applications for residential buildings in Australia and thereby provides guidance on how to best meet the requirement set out in the timber credit in the Green Start rating scheme. Structured interviews were used to collect the data on the cost of timber materials in their lifetime from builders, tradesmen and other residential construction professionals. Three sets of cost information were received under each application, for the individual timber species against three conditions (low, medium and extreme weather) with reference to residential buildings. Based on life cycle cost analysis results, the most suitable timbers for different applications are recommended.
Cement is one of the widely used materials in construction. Due to the adverse impacts towards the environment from cement manufacturing, green building rating tools always give a significant ...consideration towards concrete usage in green buildings. Irrespective of its significance in green buildings, there is a clear lack of research on life-cycle cost (LCC) impact of using supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) in cement as required by green building rating tools. Therefore, this research analyses the life cycle costs of concrete using SCMs in obtaining concrete credits according to Green Star rating system in Australia. This research used fly ash, slag and silica fume as SCM for concrete. The SCM replacement percentage in concrete ranges from 10% to 60% as higher than 60% substitution is impractical. This research calculated LCC for each replacement percentage and specific building elements in different strength categories. LCC of concrete decreases with higher SCM replacement percentages. Further, there are only slight differences in LCC when comparing the three SCMs. In LCC, the contribution from the initial material cost is approximately 85%–87%, and in an exceptional situation such as in columns, this lowers to 66%. In larger columns, the cost of demolition is greater than that of the initial cost whereas it contributed to 61%–68% of the LCC.
Solar electricity that is produced from photovoltaic solar systems has the potential to deliver clean sustainable energy. Positive steps are being undertaken to minimise greenhouse gas emissions in ...Australia and photovoltaic solar systems are contributing towards sustainability. The current amount of installed photovoltaic solar systems cannot address the global warming issues in whole, however renewable energy production is contributing towards minimising carbon emissions. One of the main concerns for the residential householders is the economic issue on the use of photovoltaic solar systems. This paper examines life cycle cost effectiveness in using photovoltaic solar systems with capacities ranging from 1.5kW to 5kW in relation to the number of occupants and consumption for residential dwellings over a 25-year period. Eight major cities in Australia, including Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Brisbane, Hobart, Adelaide, Darwin and Perth, are investigated. Life cycle cost comparisons among different types of electricity grid connected systems, including a gross-feed-in-tariff (GFIT) scheme, a net-feed-in-tariff (NFIT) scheme and a buy-back scheme, are also explored. It is found that all major cities can receive life cycle cost saving in installing photovoltaic solar systems in their residential dwellings. The life cycle cost saving is between $273 and $53,021 and the percentage of cost saving is between 0.35% and 123.83% in a 15-year period. It appears that the GFIT and NFIT schemes offer better benefits than the buy-back scheme in installing photovoltaic solar systems. It is also found that the higher the capacity of the photovoltaic solar systems, the higher the life cycle cost saving can be received. This paper contributes to prove the cost effectiveness of using photovoltaic solar systems with the example from Australian residential dwellings.
Whilst the benefits of applying an industrialized building system (IBS) have been well recognized globally in the construction industry, the application of IBS is particularly limited in developing ...countries such as China, and quality is considered one of the key issues affecting its application. This paper identifies a number of the key quality factors which present barriers to the promotion of IBS within the context of the Chinese construction industry. These include key factors such as “Inaccurate design of the connecting points between core components”, “Lack of design norms and standards for IBS components”, “Lack of quality criteria for IBS components”, “Lack of production norms and standards for IBS components”, “Lack of quality management system in production process”, and “Lack of technical guidelines for the construction of IBS projects”. The data used for analysis are derived from a comprehensive practical survey. The validity of the data is examined by using a statistical method. The findings from the study provide valuable references for formulating effective measures to mitigate the negative effects of these quality factors on IBS application in China, thereby ensuring that practice of the IBS system can be further developed within the country.
Selecting suitable construction designs for efficient energy management and moderating greenhouse gas emissions regarding to a construction project's life-cycle of are typically demanding to ...designers in the fight with climate change across the global. Scientists are striving to develop building optimization models so that strategies are ably devised to moderate energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions simultaneously. An inclusive greenhouse gas emissions valuation model is established to utilise several types of buildings envelop, which is adhered to the National Construction Building Code of Australia - energy efficiency requirement. The extracted results are exported from GaBi version 8.1 and consolidated by Visual Basic in Microsoft Excel to calculate greenhouse gas emissions amount in regard to building's energy consumption in 50 years. Accordingly, Credit 15A which is one of five pathways in the category: Green-Star's greenhouse gas emissions reduction (Green-Star is the rating tool to enhance a project's sustainability during its life-cycle) will be used to assess by selecting the wall structures following the guidance in the Insulation Council of Australia and New Zealand (2014) handbook. With the model, designers and planners probably apply the optimum envelope structure types with the relevant R-value options for their design.
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