Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Meanwhile worldwide movements for standardization of the energy conscious
design have been working towards sustainable and energy effi cient buildings in
Canada, the UK, Japan, Qatar, etc.
All these efforts show that building design and operation in general and HVAC
system design and operation as one of the most important energy consumers in the
buildings have been subjected to more focused energy effi cient design more than
any other time before. For example, out of a total hundred points available for LEED
2009 certifi cation for new constructions, in Energy and Environment (EA) section,
nineteen points are designated for optimizing energy performance and three points
are designated for measuring and verifying the system different components, and a
few more credits in Indoor Air Quality (IEQ) section are designated for controlling
and monitoring preferable condition for indoor air quality. These points are directly
related to the HVAC system effi ciency and operation e.g. outdoor air delivery moni-
toring and thermal comfort controllability (Khazaii
2012
).
As it shows the design engineers now are expected to select more effi cient sys-
tems for designing buildings and are responsible for wisely consuming energy
sources without allowing their designs to leave adverse effects on environment, and
in order to do so they have to satisfy the requirements and regulations developed by
the different sustainability scoring systems.
In the following paragraphs I briefl y introduce some of the important energy
scoring systems that are more common and are frequently used throughout the
world as the sustainability evaluating and scoring tools.
11.1
BREEAM
Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM)
was the fi rst standard in United Kingdom in last decade of past century that was
developed to advocate sustainable design and has been used to calculate and describe
the performance of different buildings since then.
As it is described in BREEAM offi cial web site “
http://www.breeam.org/
,”
BREEAM UK is consisted of BREEAM New Construction, BREEAM Communities,
BREEAM In-Use, Eco-Homes, BREEAM Refurbishment, and Code for Sustainable
Homes. BREEAM Europe Commercial can be used to assess offi ce, retail, and
industrial buildings in any European country, BREEAM International Bespoke can
be used for assessment of a single building anywhere in the world, and BREEAM
In-Use can be used for helping managing existing buildings anywhere in the world.
If a building cannot be categorized under any of the specifi ed standard schemes
described in BREEAM, then “BREEAM other Buildings” standard can be utilized
to evaluate that building. The UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and
Spain are the major countries that use tailored versions of BREEAM systems. Other
countries can use BREEAM International scheme which is a more general standard
with less customization.
Different levels of classifi cation presented by BREEAM are (1) “pass” for
qualifying for at least thirty percent of all possible credits, (2) “good” for qualify-
