IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v16y2024i11p4345-d1398919.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Examining Energy Efficiency Practices in Office Buildings through the Lens of LEED, BREEAM, and DGNB Certifications

Author

Listed:
  • Bianca Gasparetto Rebelatto

    (Post Graduate Program in Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Passo Fundo, BR 285, Passo Fundo 99052-900, RS, Brazil
    European School of Sustainability Science and Research, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, 21033 Hamburg, Germany)

  • Amanda Lange Salvia

    (Post Graduate Program in Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Passo Fundo, BR 285, Passo Fundo 99052-900, RS, Brazil
    European School of Sustainability Science and Research, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, 21033 Hamburg, Germany)

  • Luciana Londero Brandli

    (Post Graduate Program in Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Passo Fundo, BR 285, Passo Fundo 99052-900, RS, Brazil)

  • Walter Leal Filho

    (European School of Sustainability Science and Research, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, 21033 Hamburg, Germany)

Abstract

Energy accounts for a significant share of carbon emissions, and buildings play a substantial role in this by contributing to both direct and indirect emissions throughout their lifecycle. Enhancing energy efficiency in buildings is a strategy to mitigate these impacts. The main goal of this review is to uncover solutions, trends, and examples of good practices in the field of office buildings. It presents effective cases and a SWOT analysis of LEED, BREEAM, and DGNB certifications, highlighting their contributions to energy efficiency in buildings on an international scale. The paper identifies and outlines similarities and differences between each methodology used to achieve energy efficiency in different buildings and contexts. The findings may allow new ways to improve access and obtain results regarding energy efficiency, thereby supporting building owners and companies in finding more effective solutions. The research highlights the necessity for continual enhancements in these systems, which should involve addressing economic factors, conducting post-occupancy evaluations, and considering lifecycle perspectives. The recommendations encompass standardizing practices, considering costs, conducting regular revisions, managing materials and resources, and incorporating occupancy measures.

Suggested Citation

  • Bianca Gasparetto Rebelatto & Amanda Lange Salvia & Luciana Londero Brandli & Walter Leal Filho, 2024. "Examining Energy Efficiency Practices in Office Buildings through the Lens of LEED, BREEAM, and DGNB Certifications," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(11), pages 1-24, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:11:p:4345-:d:1398919
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/11/4345/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/11/4345/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Manshu Huang & Yinying Tao & Shunian Qiu & Yiming Chang, 2023. "Healthy Community Assessment Model Based on the German DGNB System," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-19, February.
    2. Pasichnyi, Oleksii & Wallin, Jörgen & Levihn, Fabian & Shahrokni, Hossein & Kordas, Olga, 2019. "Energy performance certificates — New opportunities for data-enabled urban energy policy instruments?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 486-499.
    3. Abu Bakar, Nur Najihah & Hassan, Mohammad Yusri & Abdullah, Hayati & Rahman, Hasimah Abdul & Abdullah, Md Pauzi & Hussin, Faridah & Bandi, Masilah, 2015. "Energy efficiency index as an indicator for measuring building energy performance: A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 1-11.
    4. Li, Qing & Zhang, Lianying & Zhang, Limao & Wu, Xianguo, 2021. "Optimizing energy efficiency and thermal comfort in building green retrofit," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 237(C).
    5. Seyda Adiguzel Istil & Jarosław Górecki & Arnaud Diemer, 2023. "Study on Certification Criteria of Building Energy and Environmental Performance in the Context of Achieving Climate Neutrality," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-19, February.
    6. Wang, Ran & Feng, Wei & Wang, Lan & Lu, Shilei, 2021. "A comprehensive evaluation of zero energy buildings in cold regions: Actual performance and key technologies of cases from China, the US, and the European Union," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 215(PA).
    7. Yinqi Zhang & He Wang & Weijun Gao & Fan Wang & Nan Zhou & Daniel M. Kammen & Xiaoyu Ying, 2019. "A Survey of the Status and Challenges of Green Building Development in Various Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(19), pages 1-29, September.
    8. Nan Zhou & Nina Khanna & Wei Feng & Jing Ke & Mark Levine, 2018. "Scenarios of energy efficiency and CO2 emissions reduction potential in the buildings sector in China to year 2050," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 3(11), pages 978-984, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Joy Dalmacio Billanes & Zheng Grace Ma & Bo Nørregaard Jørgensen, 2025. "Data-Driven Technologies for Energy Optimization in Smart Buildings: A Scoping Review," Energies, MDPI, vol. 18(2), pages 1-49, January.
    2. Hedi Trabelsi & Younes Boujelbene, 2025. "Sustainable Development in the Tunisian Hotel Sector: A Case Study of Using LED Lighting and Photovoltaic Systems," Energies, MDPI, vol. 18(8), pages 1-30, April.
    3. Ali Mansouri & Mohsen Naghdi & Abdolmajid Erfani, 2025. "Machine Learning for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Credit Targeting: Project Attributes and Climate Analysis Toward Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(6), pages 1-19, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hettinga, Sanne & van ’t Veer, Rein & Boter, Jaap, 2023. "Large scale energy labelling with models: The EU TABULA model versus machine learning with open data," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 264(C).
    2. Zhang, Shicong & Wang, Ke & Xu, Wei & Iyer-Raniga, Usha & Athienitis, Andreas & Ge, Hua & Cho, Dong woo & Feng, Wei & Okumiya, Masaya & Yoon, Gyuyoung & Mazria, Edward & Lyu, Yanjie, 2021. "Policy recommendations for the zero energy building promotion towards carbon neutral in Asia-Pacific Region," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    3. Kotarela, Faidra & Kyritsis, Anastasios & Agathokleous, Rafaela & Papanikolaou, Nick, 2023. "On the exploitation of dynamic simulations for the design of buildings energy systems," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 271(C).
    4. Søndergaard, Henrik Alexander Nissen & Shaker, Hamid Reza & Jørgensen, Bo Nørregaard, 2024. "Contextual operational energy performance indexing of district heating consumers," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 302(C).
    5. Pan, Yue & Zhang, Limao, 2020. "Data-driven estimation of building energy consumption with multi-source heterogeneous data," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 268(C).
    6. Zhiwu Zhou & Julián Alcalá & Víctor Yepes, 2022. "Research on Sustainable Development of the Regional Construction Industry Based on Entropy Theory," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(24), pages 1-23, December.
    7. Chen, Huadun & Du, Qianxi & Huo, Tengfei & Liu, Peiran & Cai, Weiguang & Liu, Bingsheng, 2023. "Spatiotemporal patterns and driving mechanism of carbon emissions in China's urban residential building sector," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 263(PE).
    8. Amal Shamseldin & Ashraf Balabel & Mamdooh Alwetaishi & Ahmed Abdelhafiz & Usama Issa & Ibrahim Sharaky & Mohamed Al-Surf & Mosleh Al-Harthi, 2020. "Adjustment of the Indoor Environmental Quality Assessment Field for Taif City-Saudi Arabia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(24), pages 1-27, December.
    9. Mustaffa, Nur Kamaliah & Kudus, Sakhiah Abdul, 2022. "Challenges and way forward towards best practices of energy efficient building in Malaysia," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 259(C).
    10. Yu Cao & Cong Xu & Syahrul Nizam Kamaruzzaman & Nur Mardhiyah Aziz, 2022. "A Systematic Review of Green Building Development in China: Advantages, Challenges and Future Directions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(19), pages 1-29, September.
    11. Zhou, Yuekuan & Lund, Peter D., 2023. "Peer-to-peer energy sharing and trading of renewable energy in smart communities ─ trading pricing models, decision-making and agent-based collaboration," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 207(C), pages 177-193.
    12. Linyan Chen & Xin Gao & Shitao Gong & Zhou Li, 2020. "Regionalization of Green Building Development in China: A Comprehensive Evaluation Model Based on the Catastrophe Progression Method," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(15), pages 1-22, July.
    13. Zhang, Xi & Geng, Yong & Shao, Shuai & Wilson, Jeffrey & Song, Xiaoqian & You, Wei, 2020. "China’s non-fossil energy development and its 2030 CO2 reduction targets: The role of urbanization," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 261(C).
    14. Camboni, Riccardo & Corsini, Alberto & Miniaci, Raffaele & Valbonesi, Paola, 2021. "Mapping fuel poverty risk at the municipal level. A small-scale analysis of Italian Energy Performance Certificate, census and survey data," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    15. Solène Goy & François Maréchal & Donal Finn, 2020. "Data for Urban Scale Building Energy Modelling: Assessing Impacts and Overcoming Availability Challenges," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(16), pages 1-23, August.
    16. Liang Chen & Yuanfan Zheng & Jia Yu & Yuanhang Peng & Ruipeng Li & Shilingyun Han, 2024. "A GIS-Based Approach for Urban Building Energy Modeling under Climate Change with High Spatial and Temporal Resolution," Energies, MDPI, vol. 17(17), pages 1-24, August.
    17. Yanyan Ke & Lu Zhou & Minglei Zhu & Yan Yang & Rui Fan & Xianrui Ma, 2023. "Scenario Prediction of Carbon Emission Peak of Urban Residential Buildings in China’s Coastal Region: A Case of Fujian Province," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-17, January.
    18. Wang, Manyu & Wei, Chu, 2024. "Toward sustainable heating: Assessment of the carbon mitigation potential from residential heating in northern rural China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    19. Shi Yin & Yudan Zhao, 2024. "An agent-based evolutionary system model of the transformation from building material industry (BMI) to green intelligent BMI under supply chain management," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-15, December.
    20. Ruveyda Komurlu & Dilara Kalkan Ceceloglu & David Arditi, 2024. "Exploring the Barriers to Managing Green Building Construction Projects and Proposed Solutions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(13), pages 1-25, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:11:p:4345-:d:1398919. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.