Pollution Research Paper

IMPACT OF GREEN BUILDING CONCEPT ON SUSTAINABILITY OF OFFICE BUILDINGS-A CASE STUDY

G.D. KUMARA, S.N. MAYA NAIK, SHANKARA AND C.R. RAMAKRISHNAIAH

Abstract

The key reason behind any environmental strain is the haphazard usage of global natural resources leading to, pollution in the environment, sea level raising, warming the earth, depletion of natural resources etc. The drastic climate variation has been observed worldwide, which in fact is mainly due to the release of CO2 from every energy actions. The building sector consumes nearly 40 % of the total energy and account for 30 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions. In this work the corporate office building comprising two basements and G+6 floors with a total built-up area of 75,903 sq. ft has been selected to study the energy and water conservation scenario. The building has been considered as conventional /baseline model as well as model having green features. The above elements have been studied by modelling and also on-site basis. The collected input data from the office building has been used to model the green building using Visual DOE 4.1 Software. The model has verified a good correlation between metered data and monthly predictions of energy conservation. The model is observed to be a better tool in providing proper estimate of optimum green elements to the designers, owners, contractors at the design stage itself. With all the green features modelled, the project building could achieve 33.76% energy improvement over the baseline building in the present model. The formulated water conservation strategy includes recycled water from sewage, rainwater harvesting, metering and sub metering and low flow fixtures. The maximum quantity of recycled water generated inside the building is 157.3 KL/month and the total saving of fresh water is 53.85%.