Energy Saving Potential in Building Envelopes through Energy Conservation Building Code and Design Alternatives in Warm and Humid Climate

Energy usage in commercial buildings significantly adds to the total annual energy consumption of the building sector in India which is growing at a fast pace. A large fraction of energy consumed in buildings is attributed to space cooling systems. Heat transfer through the building envelope leads to higher demand for space cooling and increased electricity usage for space cooling systems which further leads to higher levels of emissions enabling climate change. In this study, the energy savings potential for commercial buildings through the implementation of Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC) of India has been studied for commercial building envelope in the warm and humid climate zone of India. The existing building envelope is analysed through documentation and a simulation model is created towards the baseline case. A second model is then simulated with ECBC prescriptive requirements using Energy Conservation Measures (ECM) and is evaluated based on energy consumption to analyse the relative performance of building envelope components. The implementation of ECBC prescriptive requirements is found to reduce energy consumption by 15.86% in the baseline case. Further implementation of Design Alternatives (DA) in the building envelope achieved a reduction in overall annual energy consumption by 32.31%.