A life cycle thinking-based energy retrofits planning approach for existing residential buildings
department or school: Applied Science, Faculty of
department or school: Engineering, School of (Okanagan)
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCO
creator: Hewa Godella Waththage, Tharindu Prabatha
issued: 2022-01-18T22:35:56Z
issued: 2022
related degree: Doctor of Philosophy - PhD
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: Curbing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has become a global need with the raising concerns about climate change. Buildings account for 32-40% of the global energy use and thereby are responsible for a significant portion of GHG emissions. Therefore, the federal and provincial governments in Canada are looking to reduce the emissions associated with buildings. Policy initiatives such as British Columbia Energy Step Code have been launched to reduce the operational emissions of the new constructions. However, embodied emissions associated with energy upgrades are being overlooked in these initiatives. Moreover, initiatives focussing on existing buildings are minimal. Therefore, this research aimed to develop a life cycle thinking-based energy retrofits decision-making approach under uncertain conditions for existing buildings. According to the recent literature, low investor confidence, predicting the performance uncertainties, performance gaps in the design and post-retrofit periods, capital investment barriers, and ensuring the quality of retrofit implementation are critical challenges faced by building energy retrofit projects. Performance gaps during the post-retrofit period are mainly caused by uncertainties associated with the building operations, which inevitably results in low investor confidence. A fuzzy-based performance prediction and retrofit selection approach was used to identify the best retrofit strategies for a given building while accounting for the performance uncertainties. Poor workmanship can also result in lower energy savings in the post-retrofit period. Therefore, the potential of employing energy performance contracts (EPC) to ensure the quality of implementation and deliver guaranteed cost and energy savings were investigated. An optimization algorithm was developed to identify the optimal financial parameters to meet the expectations of all stakeholders involved in an EPC. It was observed that the retrofit solution that produces the highest …
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/80676
note: A LIFE CYCLE THINKING-BASED ENERGY RETROFITS PLANNING APPROACH FOR EXISTING RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS by Tharindu Prabatha Hewa Godella Waththage B.Sc. Eng. (Hons), University of Moratuwa, 2014 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE COLLEGE OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Mechanical Engineering) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Okanagan) January 2022 © Tharindu Prabatha Hewa Godella Waththage, 2022 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the College of Graduate Studies for acceptance, a thesis/dissertation entitled: A LIFE CYCLE THINKING-BASED ENERGY RETROFITS PLANNING APPROACH FOR EXISTING RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS. submitted by Tharindu Prabatha Hewa Godella Waththage in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Kasun Hewage, School of Engineering Supervisor Dr. Rehan Sadiq, School of Engineering Co-supervisor Dr. Shahria Alam, School of Engineering Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Zheng Liu, School of Engineering Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Jian Liu, School of Engineering University Examiner Dr. Fuzhan Nasiri, Concordia University External Examiner iii Abstract Curbing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has become a global need with the raising concerns about climate change. Buildings account for 32-40% of the global energy use and thereby are responsible for a significant portion of GHG emissions. Therefore, the federal and provincial governments in Canada are looking to reduce the emissions associated with buildings. Policy initiatives such as British Columbia Energy Step Code have been launched to reduce the operational emissions of the new constructions. However, embodied emissions associated with energy upgrades are being overlooked in these initiatives. Moreover, initiatives focussing on existing buildings are minimal. Therefore, this research aimed to develop a life cycle thinking-based energy retrofits…
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2022-02
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0406300
language: eng
degree discipline: Mechanical Engineering
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
contributor: Hewage, Kasun
contributor: Sadiq, Rehan
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/80676