ENERGY PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF SINGAPORE'S TERTIARY AND PRIVATE EDUCATION INSTITUTES

Abstract

Singapore, as a city state with scarce natural resources, energy conservation is essential for ensuring economic sustainability. The building sector is the largest energy consuming sector, accounting for over one-third of final energy consumption globally as mentioned by the International Energy Agency. Having recognized this, the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) introduced several strategies that aims to improve building energy efficiency.

The study aims to look into one of the many strategies introduced by BCA, which is Annual Energy Benchmarking of Singapore’s building stock. In order to narrow down the scope, this study focuses mainly on education institutes, specifically tertiary and private institutes.

Energy performance and energy benchmarking is highly related in a way that through benchmarking, it can inform building owners how well their building(s) are performing with respect to other buildings of similar nature. After knowing where their building stands among the others, energy efficiency strategies will be developed catered to the building in order to achieve better performance. After energy benchmarking was first introduced in 2014, EUI of Education Institutes have improved over the years.

Like many other types of building, it is important to provide occupants with indoor air comfort while conserving the use of energy. Especially for educational institutes, it is important to have a comfortable environment for students to learn. As such, this paper looks into how energy benchmarking can be improved in order to achieve better energy performance while not compromising the comfort of occupants.