Energy profiling in the life-cycle assessment of buildings

Purpose - Building energy performance is a key element when assessing the sustainability, or otherwise, of the built environment. However, the prescriptive nature of current approaches to sustainability assessment stultifies innovative approaches to sustainable building design. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how a current EU FP7-funded project, entitled IntUBE - Intelligent Use of Buildings' Energy Information, will contribute to improving the measurement and evaluation of building energy performance. The paper also seeks to highlight the potential offered by the energy-profiling tools and techniques being developed as part of the project to contribute to the assessment of sustainable urban development. Design/methodology/approach - The IntUBE project is developing new methods of integrating the information and communication technologies (ICTs) used in the design and operation of buildings, with the aim of facilitating improvements in the energy performance of buildings and the measurement of that performance. To do so, the project will develop new methods and tools which integrate design phase and operational phase energy profiling. Findings - Integrating the ICTs used to assess the design and operation of buildings could significantly improve the way in which the energy performance of buildings is assessed. However, there are many barriers to the adoption of the energy-profiling software tools designed for professional use. This is problematic because a more generalised uptake of these tools is essential to improving the measurement and evaluation of building energy performance. Originality/value - It is important that the energy-profiling tools and techniques developed within the IntUBE project ameliorate as many of the barriers to the adoption of the energy-profiling software tools as possible. To do so new approaches to the following are under development; the integration of building information model authoring software and energy simulation software, the integration of simulation and real-time data-capturing sensors, and evaluating and selecting amongst the design alternatives offered by energy simulation software.