Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Reduction Of Embodied Carbon In Buildings Through Use Of Low Carbon Strategies And Standardization And Enforcement Of Life Cycle Assessment, Bhargavi Sai Sudhakar

Master's Projects and Capstones

The building and construction industry is energy intensive and as of 2021, this industry is responsible for 37% of the total global greenhouse gas emissions. In previous studies of conventional buildings, the operational energy of a building contributed to 80% and the embodied energy contributed to 20% of the total life cycle energy. With increase in policies and standards that focus on reducing the operational energy, low energy and certified green buildings have emerged where the operational energy has considerably reduced. The relative and absolute share of embodied energy in these energy efficient buildings have increased due to excessive use …

Minimum Conditions For Visible Mold Growth, G. A. Tsongas, Frank Riordan

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Considerable confusion and misunderstanding exists over the conditions required for visible mold growth at a surface in buildings. That is evident in papers and articles authored by engineers and other scientists, including various ASHRAE, ASTM and Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation publications. One of the major problems is that many HVAC engineers, building scientists, practitioners and others believe there exists a single critical value of the relative humidity (RH) of the indoor or ambient air well away from surfaces, below which mold will not grow on surfaces. However, that is not the case. The purpose of this article is to clarify …

Quantile Regression Ensemble For Summer Temperatures Time Series And Its Impact On Built Environment Studies, Manuel Herrera, Matthew Eames, Alfonso Ramallo-Gonzalez, Chunde Liu, David Coley

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The occurrence of heat waves, heavy rainfall, or drought periods have an increasing trend nowadays as consequence of Earths global warming. This seriously affects natural habitats and directly impacts on the human environment. Architects and engineers use different approaches to model reference and future weather conditions to achieve building designs that resilient and energy efficient. However, modelling extreme weather events within those future conditions is a relative few explored field. This paper introduces the analysis of regression models for summer temperature time series that facilitate the representation of those extreme events; this is based on upper and lower quantiles, instead …

Fulfilling The Promise Of The Paris Agreement: The Role Of Efficiency And Renewable Energy, Chuck Kutscher

CO2 Summit II: Technologies and Opportunities

Renewable energy, energy policy, energy efficiency, buildings

The rapid large-scale deployment of efficiency and renewable energy technologies is crucial to meeting the goals of the COP21 agreement. Key to achieving this is transitioning to zero-carbon cities comprised of highly efficient buildings powered by renewable electricity. This presentation will survey the current efficiency and renewable energy research underway at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory with special attention paid to zero-carbon buildings and the challenges of developing a renewable energy electric grid.

Assessment Of Seismic Damage Of Buildings And Related Environmental Impacts, Carley A. Feese

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Sustainable development has only recently started examining the existing infrastructure, and a key aspect of this is hazard mitigation. To examine buildings under a sustainable perspective requires an understanding of a building's life-cycle environmental costs, including the consideration of associated environmental impacts induced by earthquake damage. Damage repair costs lead to additional material and energy consumption, leading to harmful environmental impacts. Merging results obtained from a seismic evaluation and life-cycle analysis for buildings will give a novel outlook on sustainable design decisions. To evaluate the environmental impacts caused by buildings, long-term impacts accrued throughout a building's lifetime and impacts associated …

Slides: Impacts Of Energy Deficits In Cooking, Illumination, Water, Sanitation, And Motive Power, Paul S. Chinowsky

2012 Energy Justice Conference and Technology Exposition (September 17-18)

Presenter: Dr. Paul Chinowsky, Director, Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities; Professor, University of Colorado

25 slides

Effective Energy Conservation And Management In The Building Sector : The Answer To The Energy Predicament, Jorge C. Cano

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Modern civilization has developed principally through man's harnessing of forces. For centuries man had to rely on wind, water and animal force as principal sources of power. The advent of the industrial revolution, electrification and the development of new technologies led to the application of wood, coal, gas, petroleum, and uranium to fuel new industries, produce goods and means of transportation, and generate the electrical energy which has become such an integral part of our lives.

The geometric growth in energy consumption, coupled with the world's unrestricted growth in population, has caused a disproportionate use of these limited natural resources. …