Sustainable building certification and the rent premium: a panel data approach

This paper investigates whether obtaining sustainable building certification entails a rental premium for commercial office buildings and tracks its development over time. To this aim, both a difference-in-differences and a fixed-effects model approach are applied to a large panel dataset of office buildings in the United States in the 2000–2010 period. The results indicate a significant rental premium for both ENERGY STAR and LEED certified buildings. Controlling for confounding factors, this premium is shown to have increased steadily from 2006 to 2008, followed by a moderate decline in the subsequent periods. The results also show a significant positive relationship between ENERGY STAR labeling and building occupancy rates.

Building energy efficiency for sustainable development in China: challenges and opportunities

Rapid urbanisation in China has resulted in great demands for energy, resources and pressure on the environment. The progress in China's development is considered in the context of energy efficiency in the built environment, including policy, technology and implementation. The key research challenges and opportunities are identified for delivering a low carbon built environment. The barriers include the existing traditional sequential design process, the lack of integrated approaches, and insufficient socio-technical knowledge. A proposed conceptual systemic model of an integrated approach identifies research opportunities. The organisation of research activities should be initiated, operated, and managed in a collaborative way among policy makers, professionals, researchers and stakeholders. More emphasis is needed on integrating social, economic and environmental impacts in the short, medium and long terms. An ideal opportunity exists for China to develop its own expertise, not merely in a technical sense but in terms of vision and intellectual leadership in order to flourish in global collaborations.

Is there a demand for sustainable offices? An analysis of UK business occupier moves (2006–2008)

‘Sustainable’ or ‘green’ commercial buildings are frequently seen as a growth sector in the property investment market. This research examines the emergence of sustainable commercial buildings in both the UK and overseas. The empirical part of the paper is based on a telephone survey of 50 UK corporate (private sector) occupiers taking leased and owner–occupied office space, which was carried out during the period of April to November 2008. The survey focused on actual moves made within the previous two years, or moves that were imminent during 2006–2008. The research suggests that although there is an emerging and increasing demand for sustainable offices in the UK, other factors such as location and availability of stock continue to remain more important than sustainability in determining occupiers’ final choice of office. Occupiers who moved to a Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM)‐rated building, and were in business sectors with strong environmental and corporate responsibility policies, placed more emphasis on sustainability than other groups in the final choice of office, but location and availability remained paramount.

Passive and active hybrid approach to buildings design in Saudi Arabia

The building sector is one of the highest consumers of energy in the world. This has led to high dependency on using fossil fuel to supply energy without due consideration to its environmental impact. Saudi Arabia has been through rapid development accompanied by population growth, which in turn has increased the demand for construction. However, this fast development has been met without considering sustainable building design. General design practices rely on using international design approaches and features without considering the local climate and aspects of traditional passive design. This is by constructing buildings with a large amount of glass fully exposed to solar radiation. The aim of this paper is to investigate the development of sustainability in passive design and vernacular architecture. Furthermore, it compares them with current building in Saudi Arabia in terms of making the most of the climate. Moreover, it will explore the most sustainable renewable energy that can be used to reduce the environmental impact on modern building in Saudi Arabia. This will be carried out using case studies demonstrating the performance of vernacular design in Saudi Arabia and thus its benefits in terms of environmental, economic and social sustainability. It argues that the adoption of a hybrid approach can improve the energy efficiency as well as reduce the carbon footprint of buildings. This is by combining passive design, learning from the vernacular architecture and implementing innovative sustainable technologies.

City futures: exploring urban retrofit and sustainable transitions

Cities are responsible for up to 70% of global carbon emissions and 75% of global energy consumption. By 2050 it is estimated that 70% of the world's population will live in cities. The critical challenge for contemporary urbanism, therefore, is to understand how to develop the knowledge, capacity and capability for public agencies, the private sector and multiple users in city-regions (i.e. the city and its wider hinterland) to re-engineer systemically their built environment and urban infrastructure in response to climate change and resource constraints. To inform transitions to urban sustainability, key stakeholders' perceptions were sought though a participatory backcasting and scenario foresight process in order to illuminate challenging but realistic socio-technical scenarios for the systemic retrofit of core UK city-regions. The challenge of conceptualizing complex urban transitions is explored across multiple socio-technical ‘regimes’ (housing, non-domestic buildings, urban infrastructure), scales (building, neighbourhood, city-region), and domains (energy, water, use of resources) within a participatory process. The development of three archetypal ‘guiding visions’ of retrofit city-regional futures developed through this process are discussed, along with the contribution that such foresight processes might play in ‘opening up’ the governance and strategic navigation of urban sustainability.

Organizing for sustainable procurement: theories, institutions and practice

That construction procurement needs to be re-organized to make it more sustainable implies that there is a problem with the current situation. Starting from this assumption, an overview of construction procurement sets the scene for a discussion of some recent developments relating to organizational frameworks for sustainable construction procurement. Emergent theories dealing with sustainable procurement are considered. There is a plethora of standards and guidance documents for organizing sustainable procurement, originating from a variety of organizations involved. These considerations form the context for approaches being used in practice to achieve sustainable procurement. The Chapter concludes with reflections on why current approaches are insufficient. It seems difficult to persuade clients to spend less money over the life cycle of their buildings. Future directions needed to translate sustainable procurement from rhetoric to reality include the development of suitable incentives and appropriate organizational structures.

Sustainability assessment indicators and methodology for intelligent buildings

The sustainable intelligent building is a building that has the best combination of environmental, social, economic and technical values. And its sustainability assessment is related with system engineering methods and multi-criteria decision-making. Therefore firstly, the wireless monitoring system of sustainable parameters for intelligent buildings is achieved; secondly, the indicators and key issues based on the “whole life circle” for sustainability of intelligent buildings are researched; thirdly, the sustainable assessment model identified on the structure entropy and fuzzy analytic hierarchy process is proposed.

Emergy-based sustainability assessment of different energy options for green buildings

It is necessary to minimize the environmental impact and utilize natural resources in a sustainable and efficient manner in the early design stage of developing an environmentally-conscious design for a heating, ventilating and air-conditioning system. Energy supply options play a significant role in the total environmental load of heating, ventilating and air-conditioning systems. To assess the environmental impact of different energy options, a new method based on Emergy Analysis is proposed. Emergy Accounting, was first developed and widely used in the area of ecological engineering, but this is the first time it has been used in building service engineering. The environmental impacts due to the energy options are divided into four categories under the Emergy Framework: the depletion of natural resources, the greenhouse effect (carbon dioxide equivalents), the chemical rain effect (sulphur dioxide equivalents), and anthropogenic heat release. The depletion of non-renewable natural resources is indicated by the Environmental Load Ratio, and the environmental carrying capacity is developed to represent the environmental service to dilute the pollutants and anthropogenic heat released. This Emergy evaluation method provides a new way to integrate different environmental impacts under the same framework and thus facilitates better system choices. A case study of six different kinds of energy options consisting of renewable and non-renewable energy was performed by using Emergy Theory, and thus their relative environmental impacts were compared. The results show that the method of electricity generation in energy sources, especially for electricity-powered systems, is the most important factor to determine their overall environmental performance. The direct-fired lithium-bromide absorption type consumes more non-renewable energy, and contributes more to the urban heat island effect compared with other options having the same electricity supply. Using Emergy Analysis, designers and clients can make better-informed, environmentally-conscious selections of heating, ventilating and air-conditioning systems.

An investigation of the required skills for the delivery of low and zero carbon buildings within a region

The United Kingdom is committed to a raft of requirements to create a low-carbon economy. Buildings consume approximately 40% of UK energy demand. Any improvement on the energy performance of buildings therefore can significantly contribute to the delivery of a low-carbon economy. The challenge for the construction sector and its clients is how to meet the policy requirements to deliver low and zero carbon (LZC) buildings, which spans broader than the individual building level, to requirements at the local and regional levels, and wider sustainability pressures. Further, the construction sector is reporting skills shortages coupled with the need for ‘new skills’ for the delivery of LZC buildings. The aim of this paper is to identify, and better understand, the skills required by the construction sector and its clients for the delivery of LZC buildings within a region. The theoretical framing for this research is regional innovation system (RIS) using a socio-technical network analysis (STNA) methodology. A case study of a local authority region is presented. Data is drawn from a review of relevant local authority documentation, observations and semi-structured interviews from one (project 1) of five school retrofit projects within the region. The initial findings highlight the complexity surrounding the form and operation of the LZC network for project 1. The skills required by the construction sector and its clients are connected to different actor roles surrounding the delivery of the project. The key actors involved and their required skills are: project management and energy management skills required by local authority; project management skills (in particular project planning), communication and research skills required by school end-users; and a ‘technical skill’ relating to knowledge of a particular energy efficient measure (EEM) and use of equipment to implement the EEM is required by the EEM contractors.