Program for propriety analysis of global warming potential caused by the operational energy consumption of buildings in Korea

Abstract

Various studies have reported that energy consumption in the operation stage in the life cycle of a building has the largest impact on global warming. However, suggesting appropriate practical directions for reducing global warming potential (GWP) is challenging owing to the absence of appropriate standards for GWP according to building energy consumption. In South Korea, environmental data of various buildings have been accumulated based on building life cycle assessment, conducted by adhering to the G-SEED standard for many years. This study aimed to develop a program that can support sustainable design by evaluating the appropriateness of GWP in the building operation stage in a simple manner and consequently suggest directions for efficiently reducing GWP passively or actively. To develop the program, first, GWP standard models were derived for each building’s energy use and source. Subsequently, a program, E2C, was built to assess the appropriateness of GWP emissions according to the energy effective area ratio from the building to be assessed, for each energy use and source, by employing the derived standard models. Finally, the applicability of the proposed program was examined through a case study and it was confirmed that design directions for securing the appropriateness of GWP could be suggested through E2C. Consequently, E2C has the potential to be used in the design stages of sustainable buildings.