ASHRAE DL: Designing Zero Carbon Buildings – Embodied and Operational Emissions in Achieving True Zero

The lecture introduces a structured approach to designing zero carbon buildings, taking into account embodied and operational emissions. The way we design zero carbon buildings starts with making design decisions about the site, geometry, thermal insulation, solar gain, solar shading, thermal mass, ventilation and integration of daylight with electrical lighting. By integrating all these aspects and by balancing the need for heating and cooling, we achieve thermal comfort for building occupants. We then put all of this into number-crunching simulation and optimisation tools, which enable us to harmonise design parameters and squeeze every ‘gram’ of performance. As a result, we obtain renewable energy requirements that balance carbon emissions arising from the combination of design parameters and requirements for heating and cooling. Thus, zero emissions are achieved, and the problem is solved. What more could be there to talk about? Except there is an elephant in the room. If we don’t take embodied emissions into account, we can overshoot the time when zero emissions are expected to be achieved by three to four decades.  For that reason, embodied and operational emissions are combined into a Zero Equation to assess the requirements for achieving zero cumulative emissions by a specified year. A working example of a building is introduced, where construction materials, HVAC equipment and renewable energy systems are analysed in detail for embodied emissions. The effects of carbon storage in biomaterials and uncertainties of available data are discussed. The lecture introduces a workflow that enables designers to achieve zero carbon buildings with certainty and by a specified year.

Recommended audience:

ASHRAE members, students, architects, property developers, building stakeholders, policy makers, etc.

About the Lecturer