A Design-based Analysis And Evaluation Of The Overall Lifecycle Energy Consumption Of Public Facilities

Energy shortage has become an increasingly threatening problem to curb thedevelopment of China’s social economic development in the21st century. Constructionenergy consumption occupies a large part of China’s overall energy consumption, theproportion of which even reaches up to50%if the overall lifecycle energy consumptionis taken into consideration. Among construction projects, large public facilites drawmore attention due to their numerous energy-consuming products and higher per-unitconsumption rate. Though there have been many studies on the building energyconsumption of large public facilities in China, studies on overall lifecycle energyconsumption are few. And even fewer studies have been carried out on an analysis andevaluation of a building’s overall lifecycle energy consumption based on the projectdesign before the actual construction process. Present studies tend to focus on theenergy consumption of such public facilities as government buildings, shopping malls,office buildings and star-rated hotels. But few are on that of large-scale comprehensivestadiums. Therefore it is necessary to carry out studies on such fields.This thesis aimes at an analysis, based on its project design, of the overalllifecycle energy consumption of a building before its actual construction process. Thewhole thesis focues on how to calculate and assess the energy consumption and thedesigned energy-saving solutions in different stages of the building’s overall lifecycle.Based on the LCA theory, the overall lifecycle is divided into five stages, namely,preparation, construction, usage, demolishment and recycling. This thesis provides foreach of the five stages a way to calculate the energy consumption and energy-savingsolutions at the same time of selectively using past literature, simulates the energyconsumption process of the evaluated building project at different stages and comes upwith advice to optimize the energy-saving solutions in the project design.The research indicates that the usage stage consumes the most energy of theoverall lifecycle, reaching as much as75.6%. There is great potential for saving energyin this stage. Besides, the energy consumption in the preparation stage should not beoverlooked. If work is done to optimize the energy-saving solutions, large amount ofconstruction materials can be saved, together with considerable material embodied energy and construction fund for the investors, thus bringing in considerable economicbenefit. According to the analysis, there is still room for improvement in the five stagesof the project’s overall lifecycle energy consumption. Based on this, correctivesolutions are put forward to optimize the project design and to provide an experimentalbasis for later-on projects with similar construction management. The methods andconclusions of this thesis can also provide reference for future assessment andpolicy-making processes in related areas.