• Energy Research

The built environment is accountable for a substantial share of global waste production. Construction and demolition (C&D) debris requires significant landfill areas and costs billions of USD. A circular economy (CE) is a business model that promotes the efficient use of materials to minimize waste generation and raw material consumption. The success of a CE model can be directly linked to the economic impact for each of the business participants. This study applies the concept of CE to estimate the macro-scale financial impact of key entities that contribute to the unclaimed C&D debris stream in the United States of America (U.S.). This study identifies three recycling steam entities: waste generators, recyclers, and end-users. The result shows that waste generators can save USD 6.5 billion by recycling in comparison to sending the current waste materials to landfills. This study could not find the estimated economic benefit for recyclers, but reasonable profit should be generated for them to sustain the C&D recycling industry. Lastly, end-users benefit by an estimated USD 34 billion, which can be achieved based on the condition of high-value recycling materials. The contribution of this paper is analyzing the macro-scale impact of CE on both business owners and consumers and showing how the impact on consumers cannot be neglected.

The built environment is accountable for a substantial share of global waste production. Construction and demolition (C&D) debris requires significant landfill areas and costs billions of USD. A circular economy (CE) is a business model that promotes the efficient use of materials to minimize waste generation and raw material consumption. The success of a CE model can be directly linked to the economic impact for each of the business participants. This study applies the concept of CE to estimate the macro-scale financial impact of key entities that contribute to the unclaimed C&D debris stream in the United States of America (U.S.). This study identifies three recycling steam entities: waste generators, recyclers, and end-users. The result shows that waste generators can save USD 6.5 billion by recycling in comparison to sending the current waste materials to landfills. This study could not find the estimated economic benefit for recyclers, but reasonable profit should be generated for them to sustain the C&D recycling industry. Lastly, end-users benefit by an estimated USD 34 billion, which can be achieved based on the condition of high-value recycling materials. The contribution of this paper is analyzing the macro-scale impact of CE on both business owners and consumers and showing how the impact on consumers cannot be neglected.

AbstractBalancing energy performance and Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) performance has become a conventional tradeoff in sustainable building design. In recognition of the impact IEQ performance has on the occupants of educational facilities, universities are increasingly interested in tracking the performance of their buildings. This paper highlights and quantifies several key factors that affect the occupant satisfaction of higher education facilities by comparing building performance of two campuses located in two different countries and environments. A total of 320 occupants participated in IEQ occupant satisfaction surveys, split evenly between the two campuses, to investigate their satisfaction with the space layout, space furniture, thermal comfort, indoor air quality, lighting level, acoustic quality, water efficiency, cleanliness and maintenance of the facilities they occupy. The difference in IEQ performance across the two campuses was around 17% which lays the foundation for a future study to explore the reasons behind this noticeable variation.

AbstractBalancing energy performance and Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) performance has become a conventional tradeoff in sustainable building design. In recognition of the impact IEQ performance has on the occupants of educational facilities, universities are increasingly interested in tracking the performance of their buildings. This paper highlights and quantifies several key factors that affect the occupant satisfaction of higher education facilities by comparing building performance of two campuses located in two different countries and environments. A total of 320 occupants participated in IEQ occupant satisfaction surveys, split evenly between the two campuses, to investigate their satisfaction with the space layout, space furniture, thermal comfort, indoor air quality, lighting level, acoustic quality, water efficiency, cleanliness and maintenance of the facilities they occupy. The difference in IEQ performance across the two campuses was around 17% which lays the foundation for a future study to explore the reasons behind this noticeable variation.

With population growth, the demand for building construction is continuously increasing. This comes at the price of the built environment where the building sector is contributing to large energy consumption and carbon footprint releases. To encourage sustainable construction, contractors need to see the market benefit of “going green”. Previous studies of green building contractors (GBCs) mainly relied on qualitative discussions and lacked studying the market performance which drives contractors’ decisions the most. This paper collects GBC revenue data from the Engineering News-Record magazine for the top 100 GBCs over a 13-year period and performs trend analysis to assess the market performance of GBCs and time series analysis to forecast future revenues. In addition, k-means clustering technique was used to divide the firms into subsets of similar behavior to understand growth trends for different firm sizes. The results show a continuous increase in green building revenues (GBRs), where commercial office buildings contribute the most to it. Furthermore, the firm ranks responsible for most of the growth are identified; mainly the top 9. Predictions show the expected steady increase in GBR in the upcoming years which is anticipated to reach 83 billion USD in 2025. The findings inform contractors considering executing green buildings by understanding the market trends and forecasted revenues. Moreover, contractors who are already in the green building business can use this information to increase their revenues in their respective market subset.

With population growth, the demand for building construction is continuously increasing. This comes at the price of the built environment where the building sector is contributing to large energy consumption and carbon footprint releases. To encourage sustainable construction, contractors need to see the market benefit of “going green”. Previous studies of green building contractors (GBCs) mainly relied on qualitative discussions and lacked studying the market performance which drives contractors’ decisions the most. This paper collects GBC revenue data from the Engineering News-Record magazine for the top 100 GBCs over a 13-year period and performs trend analysis to assess the market performance of GBCs and time series analysis to forecast future revenues. In addition, k-means clustering technique was used to divide the firms into subsets of similar behavior to understand growth trends for different firm sizes. The results show a continuous increase in green building revenues (GBRs), where commercial office buildings contribute the most to it. Furthermore, the firm ranks responsible for most of the growth are identified; mainly the top 9. Predictions show the expected steady increase in GBR in the upcoming years which is anticipated to reach 83 billion USD in 2025. The findings inform contractors considering executing green buildings by understanding the market trends and forecasted revenues. Moreover, contractors who are already in the green building business can use this information to increase their revenues in their respective market subset.

AbstractMore than two thirds of the U.S. electricity consumption occurs in buildings, which also are responsible for about 40% of the world's CO2 emissions. Therefore, the “green” building movement has become widespread in an effort to reduce buildings’ impact on the resource use and the environment. The USGBC's LEED rating system in one such effort intended to recognize high performance buildings. One of the USGBC's objectives is to reduce building energy consumption, and this paper aims to test this energy-reduction hypothesis. The methodology includes investigating LEED-certified buildings and comparable non-certified buildings on a university campus, and measuring differences in their energy performance. Heating, cooling, and electricity data was collected from all campus buildings and their energy unit intensity (EUI) was calculated. The preliminary analysis shows LEED buildings are not displaying major differences in energy performance when compared to their non-LEED counterparts. This paper's findings make the case for more performance-based certifications, similar to the LEED O&M certification, which should be awarded based on actual energy performance of facilities as opposed to intended performance based on design data.