This study presents a comparative analysis of carbon emissions and thermal comfort in an Indian affordable housing project, employing two envelope materials: EPS core technology and brick-andmortar construction. The study quantifies embodied and operational emissions through life cycle analysis to establish an emissions thermal comfort trade-off.
In recent years, the adaptive model of thermal comfort has gained traction as a more robust alternative to fixed set-point-driven design, which considers various factors that impact human comfort, such as humidity, air velocity, mean radiant temperature, and ambient temperature. Nonetheless, it is crucial to recognize the limitations of such models and the potential for discomfort and stress.
Green Buildings were a market initiative to propel sustainability in the built environment. Various national and international Green Building Rating Agencies have formulated several region- and building typology-specific Green Building Rating Programs (GBRP).
The paper acknowledges that Urban Heat Island Effect (UHIE) occurs due to urbanization impacting earth surface characteristics, changes in the vegetation profile within urban regions, and increased anthropogenic heat. Without a common agreed-upon methodology with the various objectives that cities wish to accomplish, Indian cities are adopting methods to study UHIE that do not help them meet the original objectives and are often found to be less scientific.
Optimizing operational energy in buildings can increase the significance of embodied energy and associated carbon emissions. Promoting low embodied energy materials and construction processes is crucial for achieving low-carbon development while reducing operational energy. However, accessing reliable embodied energy data for construction materials in India poses a major challenge for conducting Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) to quantify the environmental impact.
Urban Building Energy Models (UBEMs) are increasingly important tools for national and local authorities seeking to understand and manage their carbon emissions. As such tools move from the preserve of research into the more general application, interest in learning about their application is increasing.
This paper is based on a study that evaluates the efficacy of early Building Performance Simulation (BPS) users in critically examining their simulation model results with minimal external support. The objective of the study was to deepen the current understanding of challenges faced by early-users of BPS tools in setting up reliable simulation models.
The purpose of this study is to assess the embodied energy emissions of walling systems used in dwelling units of India over a reference period of 50 years. The Life Cycle Assessment is undertaken within the system boundary of cradle to gate, as defined in standard ISO 14044.
On an average, India has more than 3000 Cooling Degree Days (CDD). The multifamily public housing being constructed under India’s Prime Minister Awas Yojana (PMAY) is aimed at providing formal housing to the society’s Economic Weaker Section (EWS). It is essential that this housing delivers thermally comfortable indoors to the occupants.
Municipal services account for 4% of the total electricity consumption in India. In wastewater management value chain, 40% - 80% of the operational expenditure is on electricity. Conventionally, energy efficiency studies and interventions focus on electro-mechanical aspects of pumping assets.
Rapid urbanization has resulted in fast development and stress on the water cycle and energy consumption. Increased built and paved surfaces lead to increased surface runoff and urban flooding. This also increases the inflow in conduit-based, electromechanical stormwater systems of a city, resulting in more energy consumption.
Efficient service delivery in the Municipal Solid Waste Management sector by default implies regular waste removal from the habitation to a treatment or disposal facility. In the 21st century, such service delivery in large cities demands on the deployment of motorised vehicles for the transport of waste. However, the ULBs in India remain oblivious to the fuel consumption among the fleet deployed.
The initiatives taken for energy efficiency in India have largely focused on street lighting, water pumping for irrigation, energy-intensive industries, and the building sector. Studies on the building sector have explored the relationship between built form and energy consumption in terms of solar energy, heat energy demand, and passive cooling. However, there is limited empirical research on municipal ser-vices like water pumping at the building level.
Final energy use for cooling in buildings has tripled between 1990 and 2016 to 2020 terawatt hours. Excluding China and Japan, India accounts for about 28% of the Room Air Conditioner (RAC) market in Asia. RAC penetration is comparatively lower at 5% in India but raising with 12% CAGR growth.
Municipal water supply systems account for the highest share of total electricity consumption out of the other energy-intensive municipal services such as wastewater pumping, treatment, and street lighting. The energy-efficiency in the sector has majorly been looked in terms of design and operational efficiency.
In India, the energy end-use is anticipated to increase by 56% from 2014 to 2050. It shares 12% of total carbon emissions in the world by Room Air Conditioners (RACs). As increase in energy production using fossil fuels has an adverse effect on climate, there is an immediate need to focus on mitigation scenario.
A review of existing large-scale building energy models was undertaken, highlighting their prevalence at geographically higher latitudes. The ability of these models to adequately represent cities in the global south is questionable and existing classifications are inadequate to describe the diversity of models that have been developed.
Different methods are used for calculating the energy consumption of buildings. While the heat balance method, weighing factor method and thermal network methods are complex and require intense computing power, the degree-day and the BIN methods are relatively simple. In this study, we have used the degree-day approach published in CIBSE TM-41 to develop a Python tool to calculate the energy consumption of energy buildings on an hourly basis.
This paper demonstrates the impact of Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC), India implementation in the city of Ahmedabad India. The study uses available administrative and property tax data from the local government in conjunction with building energy simulation to estimate the benefits of various energy conservation measures (ECM) proposed in the ECBC. The study compares ECM between two versions of the code titled ECBC 2007 and ECBC 2017.
In order to assist tertiary architectural education institutions as well as the architecture profession in developing course material and training packages related to Building Performance Simulation (BPS), we present the outcome of a survey conducted in Australia, India, the US and the UK.
India is witnessing a buzz of activity to promote energy efficiency in buildings at national and regional levels. These efforts range from policy measures, international programs, training courses and educational programs, research projects, advocacy programs by various organizations to individual efforts to design, construct and operate energy efficient buildings.
As energy consumption from residential buildings is predicted to rise by more than eight times by 2050, it is of vital importance for India to develop energy-efficiency strategies focused on the residential sector to limit the current trend of unsustainable escalating energy demand. This study investigates impeded growth in energy consumption in the Indian residential sector and documents energy saving potentials that can be achieved with the focused policy and market efforts.
To achieve indoor environmental comfort conditions and to facilitate economic activities, building occupants use electric energy. In conventional scenario electric grid provides electricity to buildings. This study attempts to evaluate feasibility of CEPT University campus – an academic, research and development facility located in hot and dry climate zone in India, to become net zero energy campus.
Various works carried out by Centre for Advanced Research in Building Science and Energy (CARBSE) at CEPT University, Ahmedabad, has been discussed in this paper. The objective of this project was also to develop a framework for Third Party Assessor (TPA) model to facilitate ECBC compliance and enforcement.
This paper traces the design and construction process of a net-zero energy building (NZEB) in a university campus in India. Climate resilient, high performance building design warrants an integrated and iterative design process with front-loaded analysis to arrive at an optimized solution.
The relevance of radiant space cooling system over conventional Variable Air Volume (VAV) space cooling system with reference to economics, system operation, installed capacity, energy consumption, and human thermal comfort has been studied for commercial office buildings in India.
India has experienced an average economic growth of 10% since 1991 leading to the establishment of new commercial buildings. Amongst other initiatives, Indian government enacted the Energy Conservation Act in 2001 (EC Act 2001), predominantly for commercial buildings. Government of India is relying on mandatory building energy code and voluntary standards and labeling (S&L) program to foster energy efficiency in commercial buildings.
Compliance with Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC) of India can save up to 1.7 billion kWh annually. ECBC enforcement poses significant challenges to local governments who are responsible for enforcement given India’s 12th Five Year Plan’s compliance goals. This paper summarizes two important initiatives taken up in India for making implementation and enforcement easier, leap-frogging the challenges that have been experienced in other countries.
In the next 18 years, India will add 67% of the floor space projected for 2030, or about 2.3 billion square meters. Buildings consume 33% of total energy in India and this is growing at 8% per annum. For a large scale market change, the Bureau of Energy Efficiency developed the Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC). Through mandatory ECBC compliance, India can achieve an annual energy saving of 1.7 billion kWh.
Urbanization has direct impact on the spatial structure of the city, which in turn results in the dramatic change of the overall immediate environment. High-rise, high density built areas provides multiple surfaces for the reflection of direct and indirect solar radiation as well as absorption & storage of the anthropogenic heat. It is often seen that this heat gets re-radiated & trapped due to neighborhood buildings causing changes in surface & ambient air temperature.
The study focuses on ways to minimize interior lighting energy consumption (ILEC) in daytime use office buildings and proposes use of solar photovoltaic’s (SPVs) to suffice the remaining lighting energy requirement. The objective of the study is to attain interior lighting energy autonomy through Solar Photovoltaic’s.
Indian Standard Time (IST) is calculated with reference to 82.5° E longitude and the difference of +0530 hours from Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). The permanent advancement of IST was proposed in the previous study from +0530 to +0600 hours with reference to 90° E longitude and is estimated to 16% of savings in peak load electricity demand by analyzing all the power consuming sectors such as industrial, agricultural and commercial sectors of India
The Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC) was launched in India in May 2007 under the Energy Conservation Act, 2001. It offers two compliance approaches: Prescriptive and Whole Building Performance (WBP). According to the EC Act, compliance with the ECBC has to be expressed in terms of Energy Performance Index (EPI) which is the annual energy consumption per square meter of floor area, and is only possible via the WPB compliance approach.
The world today is grappling with the challenge of balancing development through responsible use of natural resources. The challenge only becomes more pronounced for developing economies like India, where improving the quality of life of the masses needs to be mindful of already starved natural resources. To this effect, the advent of clean energy economy is an imminent solution since it has the potential to respond to the challenges and deliver the projected growth in a sustainable way.
Before India’s building sector can fulfil its CO2 abatement potential, it is imperative for new build projects, especially those which provide for commercial and public functions, to eschew the energy-intensive designs that characterized western commercial buildings of the 20th century.
Hygrothermal behavior in materials can impact the energy consumption and thermal comfort of the building space. Commonly, cement plaster is used for plastering surfaces of a building space instead of the traditionally employed lime plaster. With this context, the objective of this study was to evaluate the hygrothermal performance of cement and lime plastered surfaces.
The advancement in the field of Urban Building Energy Modelling (UBEM) is assisting urban planners and managers to design and operate cities to meet environmental emission targets. The usefulness of the UBEM depends upon the quality and level of details (LoD) of the inputs to the model. The inadequacy and quality of relevant input data pose challenges.
Direct evaporative cooling (DEC) is one of the most commonly used cooling systems in many parts of the world with mainly hot and dry climatic conditions. Various simulation-based studies have been conducted to explore the potential of direct evaporative cooling in buildings. However, current dynamic thermal simulation tools use a simplified on/off control approach and do not allow modelling of situations where advanced algorithms are used in controlling DEC units.
The commercial and residential sector demands high cooling requirement, which is mostly achieved by using conventional cooling systems like split ACs, chillers or VRF. These systems currently produce 100 MT of CO2 per annum and hence contribute significantly to carbon emissions.
Phase change materials (PCMs) are known for storing thermal energy by the virtue of their inherent latent enthalpies. Careful introduction of PCMs as thermal mass along with external insulation is likely to increase thermal comfort hours in naturally ventilated buildings and reduce cooling energy consumption in air conditioned buildings.
The study aims at quantifying the savings in lighting energy consumption for office buildings in India due to the permanent advancement of Indian standard time from +0530 to +0600 GMT. The study initiates by walk through energy audit to evaluate lighting load and occupancy details for Ahmedabad and Kolkata. This data is used to develop reference models for simulations and determine lighting energy consumption.
Lime and cement are the commonly used walling materials in India. They are used as wall mortar and wall finish materials. Lime is a sustainable material with qualities such as breathability and better moisture transfer properties. Though it is a natural material, in contemporary construction practices, lime mortar or lime plaster has been replaced by cement mortar and cement plaster.
This study is conducted to assess the transition in outdoor thermal comfort (OTC) due to the synergistic effects of high-density high-rise development in urban regions and increasing global temperature. The shifting climate of urban spaces impacts Outdoor thermal comfort (OTC), thus human behaviour and accessibility to outdoor spaces.
Thermally comfortable and energy-efficient buildings will play a pivotal role in radically reducing operational energy use and carbon emissions from the built environment. The emphasis in emission reduction strategies is now moving away from reliance on the marginal energy benefits of slightly more energy efficient machines for meeting emission reduction targets towards the provision of energy-sufficient buildings that not only protect occupants from the predicted more extreme climates of the future while also resulting in radical emission reductions.
The study presents a cost-effective and scalable method to determine the Window to Wall Ratio (WWR) and A/C status of existing buildings from ground-view façade imagery. Object Detection Classifier deploying Faster Region-based Convolutional Neural Network (Faster R-CNN) is used to detect windows and buildings in visible images.
As per the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) during the last two decades heat waves accounted for 5.6% of the all the disaster related global fatalities. Several cities have established heat wave management task forces that warn and prepare people for upcoming heat waves by various mitigation strategies and advisories.
Occupant's interaction with the external fenestration has a large impact on the indoor environment and energy consumption of buildings. The rapid increase in India’s residential cooling demand requires a better understanding of mixed-mode operations in residential buildings. This study attempts to understand occupant behaviour for window operation.
The Central Business District (CBD) of Ahmedabad in India, planned to be developed by 2040, will have increased floor space, three times of what it is in 2020. This will double the cooling energy demand if contemporary practices are followed. This research aims to develop building envelop retrofit strategies which minimize the lifecycle cost and the total annual cooling energy consumption in the coming decades, till 2040 with a rise in floorspace for the CBD of Ahmedabad.
Growing urbanisation in India has led to the increasing development of high-rise buildings. To maintain the building aesthetics, the outdoor air conditioner (AC) units are stacked withing a recessed space. The heat rejected from these outdoor units (ODU) leads to increase in air temperature of the recessed space. This causes inefficient working of AC units. The paper reports the difference in results when on-site measurement data were compared to CFD simulation results.
Rapid urbanization, rising per capita income and a warming climate are significantly increasing the burden on the electricity grid throughout India(Rawal and Shukla, 2014). The combined use of natural ventilation (NV) and mechanical cooling (MC) systems is a potential solution to provide cooling and thermal comfort to building occupants. Mixed-mode (MM) buildings use NV and MC to provide a comfortable environment for the occupants.
This paper presents four design charts (DC) to work as a simplified, easy-to-use and cost-effective tool to assist architects and building designers on sizing openings to deliver natural ventilation (NV) for cooling. The DC are derived from analytical techniques for four NV design systems based either on buoyancy-driven or wind-driven flow.
The paper presents the case study of a Net-Zero Energy Building (NZEB) located within the CEPT University campus, Ahmedabad. It starts with a narration on design and construction and provides an overview of the building envelope characteristics and operational strategies. Custom design and operation of the building management system (BMS) in order to synchronize the electrical consumption and generation using solar PV is described.
Current prescriptive building codes have limited ways to account for the effect of solar shading, such as overhangs and awnings, on window solar heat gains. We propose two new indicators, the adjusted Solar Heat Gain Coefficient (aSHGC) which accounts for external shading while calculating the SHGC of a window, and a weighted SHGC (SHGCw) which provides a seasonal SHGC weighted by solar intensity.
Indian real estate is trying to find appropriate solutions to provide thermally comfortable dwellings using passive design strategies. Historically, a big part of architectural teaching has been focused on learning about climate responsive strategies from vernacular buildings. However, such knowledge sharing was based on observational studies as opposed to long-term scientific field studies with quantitative outcomes.
Reducing solar heat gain to achieve thermal comfort and energy efficiency in buildings is one of the key strategies adopted by architects in cooling dominated climate. Brick trellis and brick masonry wall are some visual expressions explored by architects. This study investigates the impact of surface modulation due to projections in brickwork on total solar heat gain.
In recent years, there has been a proliferation of air-conditioning in both residential and commercial buildings in India. Mixed-mode buildings are buildings in which a combination of air-conditioning and natural ventilation is used to provide comfortable indoor environments. These buildings are likely to be less energy consuming than fully air-conditioned buildings, and further energy savings can be achieved by using air movement to increase the cooling setpoint temperature without jeopardizing the occupants’ thermal comfort.
In the context of climate change, reduction in operational energy of buildings has gained a prominent focus amongst researchers and practitioners. India and the U.S. have both used design strategies to provide comfortable indoor environments with no or marginal reliance on conventional energy sources, but often with significant differences in their approaches and historical context. In particular, certain locations in both countries offer opportunities to design and operate buildings that are naturally ventilated or mixed-mode (combining operable windows and mechanical cooling).
India has a largely cooling dominated climate where space cooling accounts for approximately 31% of the energy consumed by commercial buildings. Deeper market penetration of air conditioning systems, higher income levels driving higher comfort expectations, and growing floor space have led to a steep rise in associated carbon emissions.
Regulating clothing is one of the most obvious behavioural responses to changing thermal conditions. The extent of clothing, in turn, affects thermal sensation and acceptability. A lack of extensive thermal comfort field studies in India has meant that there has been very limited data on clothing related occupant behaviour in Indian offices until now.
As the climate changes, global use of air-conditioning will proliferate as solutions are sought for maintaining thermal comfort in buildings. This rises alongside increased purchasing power as economies grow, harbouring the potential to unleash an unprecedented growth in energy demand. Encouraging higher levels of air movement at warmer temperatures to maintain thermal comfort may offset the risk of increased air-conditioning use.
This paper presents study of application of Laser Cut Panel (LCP) with reference to availability of daylight in deep plan open offices. The study generates Bidirectional Scattering Distribution Function (BSDF) data of LCPs using Radiance-genBSDF program, which was compared with measured BSDF data using goniophotometer.
As our fast interdepended global world enters the depth of the 21st century, everyone’s immediate attention is to mitigate climate change by various means. One of the proven methods to address climate mitigation is to reduce energy consumption in buildings. The war with global energy crisis is getting intense every second we breathe.
Buildings account for 30% of energy consumption in India, and it is estimated that 70% of the projected commercial building stock by 2030 is yet to be built. The recently established five-year US-India Centre for Building Energy Research and Development (CBERD) project aims to address the barriers for adopting low energy consuming strategies in buildings in India, while exploring the lessons that can also be applied to the US context.
To achieve net zero energy, façade designs must move from static dark glass monoliths to dynamic, climate responsive layers for balancing daylighting and shading, natural ventilation and mixed mode conditioning. While 5-15 year energy paybacks are sufficient to prompt some level of increased investment in facades, dynamic facades require the addition of triple bottom line (TBL) calculations that capture the economic, environmental and human benefits of high performance buildings.
India has a rich tradition of passive architectural design practice. There has been, however, little effort to study these design strategies to evaluate their effectiveness. This study analyses the climate responsiveness and thermal performance of domes and vaults in brick masonry. The study compares the performance of hemispherical domes and segmental vaults in a residence-office building for indoor conditions measured on hourly basis for one year.
Free-running buildings (i.e. naturally ventilated buildings with no mechanical systems for heating or cooling) have the potential to be much more energy efficient than air-conditioned buildings. This paper is based on approximately 3200 instantaneous thermal comfort and 1500 long term background survey datasets from a large scale field study conducted in free-running Indian office buildings.
The increasing penetration and diversity of plug loads and their ubiquitous nature in work environments in India means that they are potentially significant consumers of electricity. End-use energy efficiency measures in buildings have largely ignored plug loads which might be attributed to a dearth of India-specific studies which quantify plug-load energy consumption and their usage characteristics through end-use measurements.
This study aims to establish a correlation between thermal comfort and energy consumption for typical office buildings in India. Building envelope characteristics are varied to represent local energy code compliant case. Regression analysis is used to derive the aforementioned correlation using energy consumption and thermal comfort indices from the simulation output.
The paper attempts to analyze the relationship between surface colour reflectance and lighting power density for a given context. Analysis was based on digital modelling using validated lighting simulation tool. The study establishes itself on the premise that grey value of colour can be presumed to calibrate the luminous character of light.
The purpose of this study is to determine appropriate daylighting devices for office buildings in the city of New Delhi, India. It addresses to those devices, which are available commercially such as light shelves, anidolic light ducts, and light tubes. It intends to understand the performance of these daylight devices to their maximum potential so as to increase the daylight availability and thereby reduce the electrical lighting loads.
The study is placed within the context of local building regulations in India. Building regulations, for fenestration in general and window openings in particular, are, to a large extent, ambiguous in nature. In the context of India, observations show that the regulations specify window size for the sole purpose of ventilation whereas windows are major role players in the thermal and daylighting performance of buildings.