Energy Implication of Sustainable Building Design

Buildings in the United States and China account for about 40% and 27%, respectively, of their total primary energy consumption. In order to reduce the energy demand, green building design and construction seem rather helpful. This paper gives a few examples of such design and construction in the two countries. The examples are (1) Donald Bren Hall Building , USA, (2) Twenty-River-Terrace apartment building, USA, (3) Living laboratory at Purdue University, USA, (4) Library of Jinan Transportation College, China (5) Cave Dwellings in North Central China, and (6) Low Energy Demonstration Building at Tsinghua University, China. These buildings used advanced technologies for cooling and heating, indoor air quality, daylighting and artificial lighting, and acoustics. Furthermore, they used recycled and low emission materials and conserved water to make them also environmental friendly. The results show that the energy demand in those buildings is at least 30% lower than that in conventional ones. However, there are barriers to be overcome in order to significantly increase green building design and construction, such as how to use technical design tools and to reduce first costs. Green building design and construction will need time to gain their popularity. Therefore, green buildings will only moderately slow down the increase of energy demand in buildings in the next two decades.