Using Display Energy Certificates to quantify public sector office energy consumption
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Publication Date
2015-11-02Journal Title
Building Research and Information
ISSN
0961-3218
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Volume
43
Pages
691-709
Language
English
Type
Article
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Armitage, P., Godoy-Shimizu, D., Steemers, K., & Chenvidyakarn, T. (2015). Using Display Energy Certificates to quantify public sector office energy consumption. Building Research and Information, 43 691-709. https://doi.org/10.1080/09613218.2014.975416
Abstract
This paper explores how internal and external characteristics affect energy use in the public sector office stock in England and Wales, using a database of 2,600 Display Energy Certificates (DECs) combined with other sources of disaggregated office information.
The DEC office benchmarks were shown to match the median fossil thermal and electrical consumptions well. Analysis of HVAC, size, occupancy density, building age, location and rateable value were considered. While newer offices were shown to have lower typical fossil-thermal consumption than older offices, this was counterbalanced by higher electrical consumption, resulting in higher typical CO2 emissions. This has implications for the UK's emissions reduction targets for 2050, indicating that while building regulations that focus on thermal performance have been successful, a focus on electrical consumption (both regulated and unregulated) is key.
The results were also compared with existing benchmarks for all UK offices, splitting the sample into four generic types, and compared to a similar smaller study of private offices. This indicated that public offices typically used less energy than the general benchmarks had previously predicted, particularly for prestige offices.
Keywords
Display Energy Certificates, DECs, Non-Domestic Stock, Offices, Energy Use, Benchmarks, CO2 Emissions
Sponsorship
This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funding for Doctoral Training Studentships, and in association with the EPSRC funded 'ReVISIONS' project [grant number EP/F007566/1].
Funder references
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/F007566/1)
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09613218.2014.975416
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/246354
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Licence URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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