Development of Green Building Materials’ Evaluation Criteria to Achieve Optimum Building Facade Energy Performance

Abstract

Since buildings and their construction materials exploit natural resources as well as the effect on energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions, evaluating building materials is needed to have more sustainable buildings. This study proposes a methodology to define the proper selection of green building materials that can be used for building façades; whilst taking its thermal performance and energy efficiency into account. Additionally, the study compared the energy consumption for six conventional materials for two types of buildings (Educational, Residential) in four climate zones using a simulation program (DesignBuilder). It included also the embodied carbon and equivalent CO2 for different types of used external façades materials. The evaluation and results is an important step to identify the suitable material that could be replaced with green material and determine how it performs in terms of simulation results and matching with the proposed criteria. The results show enhancement of thermal comfort when replacing a conventional material Brickwork with an environmentally friendly one (Autoclaved Aerated Concrete Block). Moreover, it has a positive impact regarding sub-criteria (from the proposed framework). However, the proposed green material couldn’t achieve the expected performance regarding energy performance (as it achieved a minor enhancement from 3245.07 to 3239.1 KWh, U-value for both materials is close) or embodied energy (as the increase of kgCO2 from 758 to 1649.3 due to cement which is one of its ingredients).