Electronic Energy Benchmarking System (e-EBS) towards Sustainable Building Energy Performance

Abstract

Taking into account the global scenario on energy use in, and the resultant carbon emission from buildings, there is a need to take an integrated approach to manage building carbon footprint by consolidating a comprehensive green building rating scheme and efficient building energy management and reporting tool into a robust benchmarking. However, currently there is no centralized system for energy performance that is integrated with green rating tool for government buildings in Malaysia. The aim of this paper is to explore the potential of an electronic energy benchmarking system (e-EBS) that integrates the assessment scoring of the Penarafan Hijau Jabatan Kerja Raya (pHJKR) rating scheme with the Jabatan Kerja Raya Energy Online System (JENOSYS) to give a more comprehensive energy performance benchmarking for a building. The pHJKR is a green building rating scheme that was created to assess the sustainable performance of buildings while considering the most recent legislative requirements. The system in this study consists of three (3) modules that automatically analyses data acquired from a user building and ultimately processes the final report, in accordance with pHJKR requirement. The e-EBS conceptual module and process flow were highlighted. The study also proposed the requirement specification for the e-EBS. The future work is the validation of the module using government offices, university faculties, and mosques as case studies to evaluate the interfacing of the modules. Prior to the validation process, energy audit reports of the case study buildings will be compared and analyzed to indicate which case study building comes with the best energy benchmark according to the Malaysian Standards (MS) 1525:2019 and pHJKR.