Energy and Greenhouse Gas Savings for LEED-Certified U.S. Office Buildings

Energy saving performance of green vegetation on LEED certified buildings

Sustainable building practices can considerably reduce building’s environmental impact in energy consumption. Covering a building envelope with green vegetation, such as green roof and green wall, is considered a sustainable construction practice, as green vegetation has a positive performance in energy savings. It reduces heat flux and solar reflectivity, generates evaporative cooling, increas...

Occupant satisfaction in LEED and non-LEED certified buildings

Occupant satisfaction with indoor environmental quality (IEQ) in office buildings has been positively correlated to self-estimated job performance and, potentially, to overall company productivity. LEED is a voluntary, consensus-based, market-driven program that provides third-party certification of green buildings, contributing to promote sustainability into the mainstream of building design a...

LEED, energy savings, and carbon abatement: related but not synonymous.

E to green the building industry are strongly linked to performance metrics such as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). Yet, despite the importance of climate impact as a driver of green building choices, such standards typically address a basket of poorly quantified “green” attributes and, when they do address energy, they focus on conservation rather than carbon emissions so...

Key issues in estimating energy and greenhouse gas savings of biofuels: challenges and perspectives

Ontology-based office activity recognition with applications for energy savings

One of the key inputs for building energy and comfort management systems is detailed and precise office activity information, i.e., what is happening in each of the monitored areas (e.g., working place, meeting room, coffee corner, etc.). Such information can be used to control appliances for saving energy while still satisfying user comfort needs accordingly. We propose an activity recognition...