Evaluation of School Buildings Using LCC & Sustainability Measures

Greenhouse gases and energy extraction, production and consumption contribute to polluting the environment, and have led to climate change and global warming, now ranked as one of the top priorities on the United Nations¿ environment agenda (Montreal & Kyoto protocols). In the United States and Canada, the building sector represents the third-largest domain of total energy consumption, after the industrial and transportation sectors. In Canada and the United States alone, close to 80 million students, teachers and staff spend at least eight hours a day in schools. There is a growing demand to construct sustainable schools designed to provide more healthy, comfortable and productive learning environments as well as to reduce energy consumption and building costs. This book presented here details the development of a Selection Framework that enables school boards to select sustainable and cost-effective structure and envelope types for new school buildings. The selection is performed based on an evaluation of the LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) rating system and life-cycle costing techniques for typical structure and envelope-type alternatives.