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Proceedings of BSO Conference 2016: Third Conference of IBPSA-England

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Implications Of A Decarbonised Grid Electric System For Building Emissions Calculation

Paul French

Abstract: Achieving the UK Government’s green house gas emission reduction targets require significant reductions in emissions from the electricity generation. This has implications for emissions from UK building stock as electrified building services will generate fewer emissions than their fossil fuel alternatives. In reviewing the National Calculation Methodology, which is used to show compliance with Building Regulations, it is found that the use of electrified building services are encouraged as are biofuel district energy systems. This study considers how two case study buildings under different services arrangements performed in terms of their building emission rate (BER) when the carbon intensity of grid electricity reduces. It is found that the fully-electrified scenarios performed well at all carbon intensities and that at a value of 0.1kgCO2/kWh the fully-electrified scenarios have a lower BER than all others considered including biofuels. Perhaps more significantly it is also found that poorly performing buildings which offset emissions with onsite low/zero carbon generation such as combined heat and power (CHP) or photovoltaic generation are shown to perform far worse under decarbonised grid scenarios. In conclusion it is suggested that current assessment tools could do more to encourage consideration of the impending grid decarbonisation. This study omitted to consider domestic buildings, district energy systems or financial aspects of the design decision process leaving much scope for future investigations.
Pages: 234 - 241
Paper:
bso2016_1100