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Procedia Engineering 118 (2015) 1305 – 1308

International Conference on Sustainable Design, Engineering and Construction

A Study on the Sustainable Building Technologies considering to

Performance of Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction
Miyeon Parka, Sungho Taeb*, Sungjoon Sukc, George Fordc, Michael E. Smithc, Robert Steffenc
a
Architectural Eng., Hanyang Univ., Ansan, 426-791, Korea
b
School of Architecture & Architectural Eng., Hanyang Univ., Ansan, 426-791, Korea
c
Dept. of Construction Management, Western Carolina Univ.,Cullowhee, NC 28723,United States

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to construct a database of sustainable building technologies considering the performance of
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions. Through analysis of various sustainable green building certifications such as G-
SEED, LEED, BREEAM, and CASBEE, sustainable technology factor categories associated with GHG reduction technologies
were derived. Environmental performance and economic characteristics according to the considered sustainable building
technology was examined and a model was generated. This model will be used to determine the best sustainable technologies
which will support optimum building design to reduce national GHG emissions in Korea, enhance energy efficiency and preserve
natural resources.
© 2015The
© 2015 TheAuthors.
Authors. Published
Published by Elsevier
by Elsevier Ltd.
Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
Peer-review under responsibility of organizing committee of the International Conference on Sustainable Design, Engineering
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of organizing committee of the International Conference on Sustainable Design, Engineering and
and Construction
Construction 2015 2015.

Keywords: Sustainable Building Technology; Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction; Sustainable Building Certification

1. Introduction

The greenhouse gas regulations of many countries have been accelerated according to global levels of climate
change. Therefore, the Korean government has published a national greenhouse gas reduction target calling for a 30
% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to the current business as usual (BAU) levels by 2020, and
various industries are making efforts to achieve this. Among these, the greenhouse gas reduction target of the
building sector is 26.9% compared to the BAU, so that the greenhouse gas reduction from buildings must be
achieved through the practical application of technologies. The establishment of an information system on
greenhouse gas reduction technologies can lead to the development and application of new greenhouse gas reduction
technologies, and the quantitative effect analysis of the greenhouse gas reductions which can derive the best

1877-7058 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of organizing committee of the International Conference on Sustainable Design, Engineering and Construction 2015
doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2015.08.492
1306 Miyeon Park et al. / Procedia Engineering 118 (2015) 1305 – 1308

available technology (BAT) which has the highest efficiency and apply it. Therefore, this study has a purpose of
building the greenhouse gas reduction performance database based upon the best available green building
technologies. For this, evaluation categories of the chosen green building certification systems (G-SEED, LEED,
BREEAM, and CASBEE) were analyzed, and three evaluation categories which are mainly associated with
greenhouse gas reduction technologies were derived. Also, the greenhouse gas reduction technologies which are
currently applicable were derived by analyzing the certification standards for each system’s evaluation category, and
the greenhouse gas reduction performance by the technology was built into the database.GG

2. Deriving GHG reduction technologies

The way to reduce a building’s greenhouse gas emissions can be largely divided into the architectural planning
method and the architectural technical method. The architectural planning method maximizes natural energy
consumption by optimizing the building layout and orientation. Although it is possible to reduce the required energy
demand during the early planning stages of a building, there is a limitation to standardizing the reduction of
greenhouse gases. On the other hand, the architectural technical method uses passive techniques and active
techniques applied to the building and a quantitative greenhouse gas reduction effect that can be analyzed by rating
the product performance. Therefore, in this study, the greenhouse gas reduction technologies were derived focusing
on the architectural technical method. For this study, evaluation categories of standard of green building certification
systems (G-SEED, LEED, BREEAM, and CASBEE) were analyzed as shown in Table 1, and the materials and
resources, ecological environment, and energy were derived as the evaluation category which is directly related to
the greenhouse gas reduction technologies of buildings. The detailed technologies were derived based on the
greenhouse gas reduction technologies which are recommended by the certification standard of each sector. Table 2
shows the list of greenhouse gas reduction technologies according to the major evaluation categories of the green
building certification system.

Table 1. Categories associated with GHG reduction technologies

G-SEED LEED BREEAM CASBEE

1. Land Use and Q environmental quality
1. Integrated design 1. Maintenance
Transportation performance of buildings
2. Energy and Environmental 2. Location and
2. Health and Wellness Q-1 indoor environment
Pollution Transportation
3. Materials and Resources 3. Sustainable Land 3. Energy use Q-2 service quality
Q-3 outdoor environments (in the
4. Water Cycle Management 4. Water Efficiency 4. Transportation
land)
LR Environmental load reduction
5. Maintenance 5. Energy and Air Quality 5. Water Resources
performance of the building
6. Ecological environment 6. Materials and Resources 6. Materials and Resources LR-1 Energy

7. Indoor Environment 7. Indoor Environment 7. Waste LR-2 Materials and Resources

8. Use of the land and LR-3 Others Environments than
- 8. Creative Design
Ecological environment the land
9. Priority of Regional
- 9. Pollution -
Features
- - 10. Innovation -
Gray background : the category of the greenhouse gas reduction technology

According to Table 2, in the materials and resources category, the ‘green building products’ and the ‘building life
cycle of greenhouse gas assessment technology’ were identified as appropriate as the greenhouse gas reduction
technology. Among these, the ‘green building products’ contributed directly or indirectly to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions by recommending the use of environmentally friendly building materials which had acquired the carbon
labeling or the environmental labeling certification pertinent to the system, and the building life cycle of greenhouse
 Miyeon Park et al. / Procedia Engineering 118 (2015) 1305 – 1308 1307

gas assessment technology which evaluates the greenhouse gas emission in advance throughout the building life
cycle during the design phase of the building. In the ecological environment category, the green roof and green wall
systems were analyzed as the greenhouse gas reduction technology. This category was investigated as contributing
to the greenhouse gas reduction that the urban heat island effect can be reduced, and the heat insulating effect of
buildings can be improved by applying artificial green systems on the roofs and walls of the shell of the building so
that it brings the effect of reducing the overall air conditioning load of the building, reducing energy use and
greenhouse gases. On the other hand, in the energy category, greenhouse gas reduction technologies were derived
from various fields such as envelop performance, lighting, equipment, automatic control, and natural energy.
Regarding the envelop performance, the ‘high performance window technology’ and the ‘high air-tight/ high
thermal insulation technology’ were derived as the technology which significantly contributes to the heating and
cooling energy savings of buildings. These can contribute to the greenhouse gas reduction of buildings by reducing
the heating and cooling energy loss in buildings through minimizing the heat loss or gain between the outside air
and the room with the best high efficiency window which will enhance the insulation performance. In lighting,
applying high-efficiency lighting systems in buildings can reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by reducing the
electric energy consumed in buildings. In the case of the equipment, the technology which best controls room
temperature and humidity in response to environmental changes inside buildings as a technology applied to promote
the comfort of residents in a building was rated. For automatic control, the central computer manages the lighting
and electric power of the entire building, reducing the standby power so that it contributes to the reduction in the
electricity consumption and greenhouse gas of buildings. For the natural energy category, techniques such as ‘solar
panel’, ‘BIPV panels’, ‘geothermal systems’ and ‘wind turbines are rated. These technologies were investigated as
contributing to greenhouse gas reductions by replacing the fossil fuels used in buildings.

Table 2. Green technology factor categories associated with GHG reduction groups and technologies
Green technology factor GHG reduction
Further GHG reduction technologies
categories technologies
Life cycle greenhouse Green Building Products
1. Materials and resources
gas assessment Building life-cycle of greenhouse gas assessment techniques
2. Ecological environment Artificial green Green roof/ Green wall system
High-performance
Double/ triple glass, Roy(dual/ triple/vacuum) glass, curtain wall frames, etc.
Envelope windows and doors
performance Highly air-tight/ high
Expanded polystyrene, polyurethane foam, glass wool, etc.
thermal insulation
Lighting High efficiency lighting Induction lamp, high efficiency LED lamp
Air Conditioning Bottom entry/ multi /single air heat utilized conditioning system, etc.
Ventilation Total heat exchanger, vaporization utilized heat exchanger, etc.
Equipment
Heat pump Air heat /geothermal /waste heat /ice thermal storage utilized heat pump
3. Energy
Waste Heat Recovery Waste air heat/waste water heat recovery system
Automatic Dimming control Dimming/ lighting / illumination pattern control system
Control Power management The maximum demand power control system, BESS, BEMS, BEIS
Photovoltaic Utilization Light ducts, optical prism, light shelf
Natural Solar heat Utilization Flatbed/ single tube type/ double-tube type solar panels
Energy Solar Cell Fixed/ track type/ BIPV panel
Geothermal Utilization Vertical enclosed/ open geothermal systems
Wind power Utilization Small wind turbines

3. Construction of GHG reduction technology database

Greenhouse gas reduction performances should be input into the database to compare the greenhouse gas
reduction technologies according to objective criteria for the easy practical use of greenhouse gas reduction
technologies which were previously discussed. The product level of technologies which are currently
commercialized were investigated targeting the detailed technologies for the categories of materials and resources,
ecological environment and energy, and they were built into the database by analyzing greenhouse gas reduction
performance. The greenhouse gas reduction performance was investigated through the energy simulation data
provided by existing references for each greenhouse gas reduction technology, and the energy-saving performance
1308 Miyeon Park et al. / Procedia Engineering 118 (2015) 1305 – 1308

and greenhouse gas reduction performance were shown by considering the conventional techniques (before 2010)
and the current techniques (after 2010) depending on the time of commercialization. Table 3 is the part of the
greenhouse gas reduction performance databased established in this study. Table 3 shows the greenhouse gas
reduction performance database on fixed solar panels, flat panel solar panels and small wind turbines.

Table 3. GHG reduction groups and technology database

Technical details mŸŒ‹Gš–“ˆ™G—ˆ•Œ“šGG m“ˆ›G—“ˆ›ŒGš–“ˆ™G—ˆ•Œ“šGG z”ˆ““Gž•‹G›œ™‰•ŒšGG
In the past
1,140 325 -
Energy (before 2010)
saving The current
1,358 596 155.13
performance (2010~14)
Unit kWh/kw.yr kWh/΃.yr kWh/kw.yr
In the past
536.37 152.91 -
Greenhouse (before 2010)
gas reduction The current
830.43 280.42 73
performance (2010~14)
Unit kg-CO2eq/kw.yr kg-CO2eq/΃.yr kg-CO2eq/kw.yr

4. Conclusions

In this study, three categories (ecological environment, materials and resources, and energy) which were
associated with the greenhouse gas reduction technologies were derived by analyzing the green building certification
systems G-SEED, LEED, BREEAM and CASBEE. Also, the technical information of the greenhouse gas reduction
which is commercially available at the present time and applicable to buildings was derived by analyzing the
certification standard of the evaluation categories, and the database was built by analyzing the quantitative
greenhouse gas reduction performance for each greenhouse gas reduction technology. From this, users can primarily
select the low greenhouse gas reduction technologies which have high greenhouse gas reduction efficiency. It is
ultimately expected that companies and individuals can enter into the low-carbon society through a variety of
institutional agreements provided they can actively encourage the participation and contribute to reducing the
greenhouse gas emission of the country.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea
government (MSIP) (No. 20110028794).

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