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B L U E P R I N T S F O R A S U S T A I N A B L E F U T U R E |
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B L U E P R I N T S F O R A S U S T A I N A B L E F U T U R E |
Authors
Prof. Rajan Rawal
Dr. Yash Shukla
With contributions from
Nagahari Krishna Lokanadham
Vivek Nair
Graphics and Layout
Vector Vibe
February 2020
Please cite this document as
Rawal, R., Shukla, Y. (2020). Exemplar Edifices: Blueprints for a Sustainable Future. CEPT Research and Development Foundation (CRDF), India and Danfoss, India.
Disclaimer
CRDF and Danfoss do not accept any responsibility for any possible errors in this compendium. The contents are not guaranteed to be complete, correct, timely, current or up-to-date. The views/analysis expressed in this document are purely based on the data provided by the building stakeholders at the time of their nomination to ACREX Hall of Fame. All images are copyright to the respective owners.
© CEPT Research and Development Foundation (CRDF)
CEPT University, K.L. Campus, Navarangpura, Ahmedabad 380 009, India
© Danfoss Industries Private Limited
Plot No. A-19/2, SIPCOT Industrial Growth Center
Oragadam Village, Sriperumbudur 602 105, Kancheepuram District, India
Printed on 100% recycled paper
Index
06 |
Exemplar Edifices |
An Introduction |
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12 |
Champions of Sustainability |
Buildings from ACREX Hall of Fame |
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The Blueprint |
Showing the Way Forward |
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Recommendations for |
High-Performance Buildings of the Future |
<![endif]>FOREWORDS
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The world is heading for tougher times with urbanization picking up pace and its contribution towards energy footprint gaining with every passing day. With the growing urbanization and fast depleting resources come a growing demand for energy efficient and sustainable solutions, suitable for modern infrastructures.
The ACREX Hall of Fame is an effort to recognise iconic commercial buildings that not only meets the above needs, but also raises the bar on Energy Efficiency and Sustainability and sets global benchmarks. We hope that the recognition received by these projects will inspire others in the HVAC industry to adopt these benchmarks.
We are delighted to partner with CEPT Research and Development Foundation (CRDF) to bring together this compendium. In CEPT, we found a perfect partner from the realm of academia and research that shares the same focus on commercial buildings and brings in synergies as that of Danfoss. This collaboration between academia and industry aims to bring forward the best practices in the industry.
We believe that this compendium will be a source of inspiration, and provide guiding principles and valuable insights to stakeholders in the industry in making their future projects greener and more energy efficient.
Ravichandran Purushothaman
President, Danfoss Industries Private Limited
E X E M P L A R E D I F I C E S Blueprints for a Sustainable Future
Buildings in India consume close to 40% of the nation’s total energy today. We spend more than 80% of our life indoors in buildings – this number is about 90% for Europe and North America. Thus, energy conservation in buildings becomes a cornerstone of any sustainable development strategy and efforts. Further, more than 40% of the energy consumed in a building is by the building HVAC system.
Therefore, to provide a focus on this aspect of sustainable development efforts, ISHRAE in association with Danfoss India launched the ACREX Hall of Fame initiative in 2015. This initiative recognizes iconic buildings with highly efficient HVAC systems through a process of nomination and selection by an elite panel of jurists.
As part of an effort to provide learnings from the last 4 years of the program, Danfoss India in collaboration with the CEPT in Ahmedabad instituted a study to analyze the HVAC system data from the 26 buildings that were shortlisted for final consideration by the Jury. This report is a comprehensive presentation of this study through illustrative graphics, charts and visuals.
I congratulate Danfoss India for commissioning this study and the team at CEPT for undertaking this study. I am confident that the information presented in this report will be of immense benefit to builders, architects, HVAC system designers, contractors and facility managers, and contribute to the growing trend of energy efficient HVAC systems in buildings in the country.
Sushil K Choudhury
Presidential Member - ISHRAE and Chair - ACREX India 2020
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Exemplar
Edifices
Blueprints for a
Sustainable Future
“With great growth, comes a great need for power. And now, more than any other time in our planet’s history, we need to act swiftly to save our future. As more and more people spend time inside commercial buildings worldwide, as well as in India, the buildings have to maximise their energy efficiency. The best starting point to increase the number of commercial buildings that are high on sustainability is to replicate the success that has already been achieved. Therefore, we’ve created a compendium of the most energy efficient and sustainable commercial buildings of India that can be used as a blueprint for the future. Read on to follow in their footsteps.
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A Time
for Change
With the dynamic proliferation of technology into our daily lives, our buildings are bound to change synchronously. The buildings of today are becoming increasingly complex organisms to design and operate, their varied functions call for the usage of non-congruous materials as well as construction and operation strategies. In the process of creating and living in these complex dwellings, our reliance on energy in the form of electricity is the utmost. Despite
facilitating our daily lives by leaps and bounds, it is the same energy which is pushing our planet to the brink of a ‘climate catastrophe’.
The energy supplied to our grids, largely by fossil fuel-based plants, comes at the cost of incessant greenhouse gas emission into the atmosphere. In the context of buildings, these direct and indirect emissions are not limited to energy usage alone but spread out to every resource utilized in the making of a building. This includes the emissions associated with extracting, manufacturing, procuring, installing, and disposal of any materials used in a building.
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Therefore, in order to be truly ‘sustainable’, the buildings must be well-designed using low-embodied energy materials and methods, and ultimately operated judiciously by the occupants.
Passive design strategies are one of the most effective and inherently affordable emission reduction methods. These strategies have been popularly romanticized to not require active methods of conditioning at all, which is incorrect. Instead, a passively-designed building judiciously uses the form and fabric of the structure to take the maximum possible advantage of the natural forces of the sun and wind. This includes spatial strategies like the stack effect, night ventilation, cross-ventilation, etc., along with construction strategies like appropriately
placed thermal masses, cavity walls, exterior shading, etc. These strategies, coupled with efficient active conditioning devices, lead to reduced emissions, without compromising on the occupants’ comfort.
It is important to categorize the buildings not just on their function or morphological typology, but also on their mode of operation. A building can be operated on – natural ventilation, mixed-mode ventilation, and active air-conditioned ventilation. Naturally ventilated buildings completely rely on the outdoor air to offer cooling to the indoors using passive design strategies, without using any mechanical cooling.
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Air-conditioned buildings maintain the indoors separated from the outdoors and use active heating/cooling devices to maintain comfort conditions, irrespective of the outdoors. The balance lies within the mixedmode buildings, which can be operated in the two aforementioned modes.
Mixed-mode ventilation can be further classified as temporal mixed-mode, spatial mixed-mode, and concurrent-mixed mode. Temporal mixed-mode allows the variation between natural ventilation and air-conditioning with respect to time – the time of day which experiences excessively high outdoor temperature can be allocated
to air-conditioned operation of the building, while during the time when the outdoor temperature remains moderated, the
same space can be operated in a naturally ventilated mode.
Spatial mixed-mode allows specific zones of the building to be air-conditioned while keeping the other zones naturally ventilated, and concurrent mixed-mode keeps a zone
conditioned using natural ventilation and airconditioning simultaneously. This indicates that the path to devising an energy efficient ventilation strategy for a building is non-linear.
Energy efficient or high-performance buildings use less energy in comparison to conventionally designed buildings by the means of including sophisticated features from the envelope to the individual building systems.
Therefore, it is not one, but a multitude of subsystems, materials, operation strategies, and equipment, which might require a relatively higher initial investment, but ensure energy savings in the long run.
The variety of occupants’ walks of life, economic backgrounds, and acclimatization patterns provides each of them a unique definition of what thermal comfort really
is. In a case this diverse, providing a linear solution by drawing boxes around specific indoor climatic conditions is bound to cause user dissatisfaction. Building operation codes and models should not recommend the operation of an air-conditioner when the outdoor air temperature is within the comfortable band. The thermal comfort models devised for subjective respondents representing a specific region, should not be chosen for regions with a drastically different climatic context.
In order to help mitigate the effects of the climate catastrophe from the viewpoint of buildings, it is important for us, as a
society, to evaluate, create the ideal thermal comfort models, and replicate the same
so as to reduce energy footprint. This includes the evaluation of unconventional building design, construction, and operation practices, and bringing them to the mainstream as scientifically validated approaches to making energy
efficient buildings.
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The communication about such approaches
should revolve around the environment and economics and specifically target
three facets
“We must arm ourselves with the validated tools of science to tackle the climate crisis, for our buildings must respond to the changing times, and the times to come are indisputably sustainable.
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Champions
of Sustainability
Buildings from ACREX Hall of Fame
“This compendium presents a brief analysis of the twenty-six (26) exemplary buildings shortlisted as finalists to the ACREX Hall of Fame between 2016 and 2019. The objective of the compendium is to extract key findings from the selected buildings and develop a valuable resource on high performance buildings for designers, consultants, and facility managers.
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