Abstract
The building sector has a significant contribution to global warming with
direct or indirect emission of greenhouse gases, including CO2, CO, N2O, and CH4.
Residential sector building contributes 36% of the total CO2 emission globally. The
delocalized energy production and building with more sustainable design and low
energy are the features that attract the project developers and architects to Renewable Energy Systems (RES). This chapter presents an attempt for the sustainability
assessment of building-integrated renewable energy systems. The chapter identifies
different RES used for onsite production of renewable energy for buildings’ energy
need and their environmental and socio-economic impacts. Solar, wind, geothermal,
and biomass energy are the primary sources for standalone and onsite energy production in building sector. The selection of RES technology highly depends on the
availability of the energy source and type of required energy. The fluctuation in
availability of renewable energy sources and the diverse nature of the required
energy for building makes integrated renewable energy systems more sustainable
for buildings energy requirement. LCA is a standard assessment method considered by researchers for the environmental analysis of building-integrated RES, while
economic impact assessment is performed by Life Cycle Costing (LCC). All energy
systems, including renewable and non-renewable energy systems, have an impact
on the environment. Energy is strongly associated with environmental problems
ranging from local to global issues. This includes air pollution, carbon emissions,
ozone depletion, etc. For industrialized and developing countries, these problems
can be more severe if not properly integrated with infrastructure. The technological
non-complexity and local applicability make the solar energy preferred choice for
buildings’ energy application. Solar energy is used both for the production of electrical and thermal energy. RES resulted in higher environmental sustainability with
lower impact as compared to fossil fuels. However, the extent of impact strongly
depends on variables like location and source of energy for the replaced energy
system. Biomass-based system is the most economical system among the considered building-integrated RES. RES systems provide more job opportunity for the equivalent spent on fossil fuels based system. However, higher installation cost, lack
of expertise, high maintenance, and high capital investment are the critical barriers
in its application. A case study presenting a renewable energy system for building
different energy needs such as heating, cooling, electricity, and hot and cold water
production is presented at the end of the chapter.
Keywords
Renewable energy
Buildings
Socio-economic assessment