Potential integration of sustainable technology in office building in Ghana: exploratory study

Building sector energy consumption has overtaken all other sectors energy use, hence this contributing significantly to the global greenhouse emission levels. It is well known that building performance is influenced by several factors, including architectural design, occupant’s behaviour, building service equipment, regulations, technologies applied among others. Integration of sustainable technologies in buildings for solving the above problem remains one of the essential areas in global research, but remains at very slow rate. This paper seeks to explore typical sustainable technologies with potential integration into office buildings in Ghana for enhanced buildings performance. The research is accomplished through administration of online survey questionnaire using Bristol Online Survey Tool and snowball sampling technique among building professionals in Ghana. The research has concluded three major findings and these are thought to have played a role in the current building energy consumption rate in Ghana. Firstly, only 14% of building professionals in Ghana access building performance of design stage and post occupancy stage. Secondly, most building professionals have little knowledge on performance of typical office building in Ghana. Thirdly, the research did not trace any significant sustainable technology that has been integrated into office building envelope in Ghana which could have affected the building performance positively. In conclusion, sustainable technologies integrated into office buildings in Ghana is insignificant irrespective of the existing valuable research carried out in other parts of the world. This is due to the prescriptive nature of the building regulations of Ghana; hence it is recommended that the building regulation should be modified into performance based to facilitate the enhancement of performance.