Energy efficiency practices for Malaysian green office building occupants

Abstract

Purpose Green building construction was adopted as a strategy to reduce energy consumption and the overall impact of the built environment on our natural environment. However, in Malaysia, previous studies have reaffirmed that green office buildings consume a substantial amount of energy, compared to their counterparts in Singapore. Moreover, there is still a significant performance gap between predicted energy measurements and actual operational energy consumption of green office buildings in Malaysia, due to occupants’ behavioural discrepancies. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to develop energy efficiency practices for occupants of green office buildings in Malaysia. The developed practices integrate technology, organisation policy, and occupants’ behavioural strategies, in order to reduce the energy consumption of green office buildings in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach To achieve the research goal, a mixed (quantitative and qualitative) research method was used to collect data from the research population. In total, 53 respondents working in a green office building complex in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia were surveyed using a questionnaire. Additionally, three top management staff of the green office building and two Malaysian construction professionals were interviewed. The study adopted convenience sampling technique in selecting the research respondents. The data from the questionnaire were analysed using SPSS software (version 22) while the interview data were analysed via thematic content analysis. Findings The findings suggest that the integration of technological strategy (use of BIM tools, sustainable building materials, etc.); organisational strategy (develop, implement and evaluate action plans, use of monitor/control systems, etc.); and occupants behavioural strategy (training, incentives, occupants energy efficiency guide, etc.) will critically reduce energy consumption of green office buildings in Malaysia. Originality/value Based on the findings, energy efficiency practices are developed to guide occupants in reducing the energy consumption of green office buildings in Malaysia. This strategy will contribute to reducing the performance gap that exists between predicted energy and actual energy use of green office buildings in Malaysia. However, the developed energy efficiency practices need to be validated to ascertain its workability in the green office building context.

Dimensions of Green Office Evidence From Regency/City Government Offices in Central Java, Indonesia

“…This implied that electrical energy conservation in the city offices was based on efficient energy usage, where the use of electricity was being monitored on a quarterly basis so as to check whether it has decreased or not. The monitoring approach is a form of control system that can effectively influence energy consumption reduction so as to realise green office buildings (Ohueri et al 2018). Interviews drawn from the informants indicated that the Surakarta city had implemented measurements to audit its energy consumption.…”

“…Sustainable building materials that are integrated with technological strategy has the potential to strategically reduce the energy consumption of these buildings (Ohueri et al 2018). Since lighting is one of the important factor enabling human beings to conduct their daily activities, lighting engineering and its planning for buildings play an important role (Setiawan and Hartanti 2014).…”

“…Based on those statement, it can be understood that the availability of parks and green open spaces in office areas is one dimension of the green office. Therefore, some respondents' statements also included the planning strategy, use of renewable resources, and energy efficient actions, in line with recommendations of (Ohueri et al 2018) who stated that the integration of technology, organisational, and occupant behaviour strategy, will critically reduce energy consumption of green office buildings.…”

A Critical Research of Green Building Assessment Systems in Malaysia Context

“…For example, in [14] conducted comment on Green Building Index(GBI) in Malaysia while review on other green building assessment systems are not conducted. Besides that, in [22] focused only on GBI and the research did not focus on other assessment systems such as MyCREST because the researchers stated that MyCREST is still fresh in Malaysia. There is a lack of research conducted to make comparison between green building assessment systems in Malaysia.…”

Discussion of the Possibilities to Achieve a Nearly Zero Energy Building (Nzeb) Using the Bim Approach

“…Performance Analysis during the decision-making cycle improves design to ensure an optimized project with better environmental effectiveness (OHUERI et al, 2018); (OLAWUMI et al, 2018).…”