Comparison of Energy Efficient and Green Buildings

The adverse environmental impacts from inefficient building construction increase if measures to reduce energy and resource use, through stringent building policies and efficient technology, are not implemented in developed and developing countries. To illustrate a holistic approach to reducing buildings' energy and resources, in her PhD thesis Shritu Shrestha compares energy efficient and green buildings in terms of their technological aspects and their policy context. She presents case studies from developed and developing countries, mainly in Europe, the USA and India, together with a policy package recommendation for Nepal.

She concludes that looking at a building's life cycle perspective, it is not sufficient to focus solely on operational energy reduction in higher energy efficient buildings as this is achieved by the increased use of energy intensive materials. Green requirements must be considered in updating building energy standards and labels, particularly for developed countries. Green building certification will also become more effective when the stringency of energy standards is higher and when the whole building life cycle assessment is considered.

With respect to developing countries the increasing scarcity of energy and resources force many of them to face up to the need for holistic green buildings. Although baseline standards are not as high as in most developed countries and national financial support is low, the gradual move towards making the standards more stringent and incorporating the wider scope of resource saving are positive developments in developing countries (e.g. India). Referring to her home country Nepal, the architect Shritu Shrestha sees even greater challenges due to the fast pace of urban growth and the absence of energy and resource efficient buildings policies, and the need for an effective policy package.

The PhD thesis "Comparison of energy efficient and green buildings – technological and policy aspects with case studies from Europe, the USA, India and Nepal" had been supervised at the

Technical University of Berlin and at the Wuppertal Institute. It was published by Universitätsverlag der TU and is available online at the repository.