The climate change accompanied by global warming has become a major threat to the world economy and survival of human race, and the anthropologic greenhouse gas emissions are known to be the major reason of the global warming.
The GHG emissions from housing buildings are determined not only by technological factors including materials and HVAC system, but also by design factors. There have been a large amount of literature on the effect of technological factors on GHG emissions of housing buildings, but the effect of design factors combined with building systems factors remains rather unclear.
In this context, this research aims to provide empirical basis on the combined effect of design factors and building systems factors on the amount of annual GHG emissions and construction cost under the 'Greenhome guidelines' released 2009 by the government.
According to the government statistics, the nation-wide annual GHG emission is estimated to be 600 Mt·CO2, and the portion of the multi-family housing sector is estimated to be 5.4% in the national emission. One apartment housing unit causes GHG emissions of 148t.CO2 throught its lifecycle when its lifecycle is assumed to be 30 years, and about 75% of the lifecycle GHG emissions is caused by energy-consumption during its in-use stage.
To provide further understanding on the link between design factors and building systems factors on the GHG emissions, an analytic framework was devised for estimating the amount of GHG emissions and construction cost under every possible combination of design variables and building systems variables. The variables used in the analysis include development density in terms of the floor area ratio, height of housing buildings, thermal insulation level, use of energy recovery ventilation system, use of combined heat and power system, and capacity of photovoltaic generation system per dwelling unit.