The document discusses sustainable design and energy efficiency standards. It provides details on sustainable design principles, GSA guidelines on sustainable federal buildings, and energy standards like ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1. The standard establishes minimum energy efficiency requirements for building design and allows for a prescriptive or performance-based compliance path. It also discusses the 2020 Guiding Principles for Sustainable Federal Buildings and the six principles around integrated design, energy and water use, indoor environment, materials selection, and building resilience.

1. Sustainable Design
Dr. Mahendra Ram
mahendra.cbe@iitp.ac.in
Climate Change, sustainability, and Engineering (CB616)

2. • Sustainable design is an integrated, holistic approach that positively
impacts all phases of a building's life cycle and encourages compromise and
trade-offs.
• Sustainable design optimizes building performance and minimizes negative
impacts on building occupants and the environment.
• To incorporate sustainable design and energy efficiency principles into
construction and modernization projects, balancing cost, environmental,
societal, and human benefits that help meet the tenant agencies' mission
objectives and functional needs.
Sustainable design principles aim to:
• Optimize site potential.
• Minimize non-renewable energy consumption and waste.
• Use environmentally preferable products.
• Protect and conserve water.
• Improve indoor air quality.
• Enhance operational and maintenance practices.
• Create healthy and productive environments.

3. GSA and sustainable design
• As per the 2005 Energy Policy Act (GSA), federal agencies must
design buildings to achieve energy efficiency at least 30 percent
better than ASHRAE 90.1 standards. Designers and energy modelers
are encouraged to use our 2020 Energy Use Target Guidance to
establish energy usage intensity targets and comply with the energy
efficiency laws, executive orders, and P100 sections applicable to
construction and modernization projects.
• Standard 90.1-2022—Energy Standard for Sites and Buildings Except
Low-Rise Residential Buildings

4. ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1
• Energy Standard for Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings is an American National
Standards Institute (ANSI) standard published by ASHRAE and jointly sponsored by
the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) that provides minimum requirements for energy-
efficient designs for buildings except for low-rise residential buildings.
• i.e. single-family homes, multi-family buildings less than four stories high, mobile homes ,
and modular homes).
• The original standard, ASHRAE 90, was published in 1975. There have been multiple editions to it
since.
• In 1999 the ASHRAE Board of Directors voted to place the standard on continuous maintenance,
based on rapid changes in energy technology and energy prices. This allows it to be updated
multiple times in a year. The standard was renamed ASHRAE 90.1 in 2001. It has since been
updated in 2004, 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2022 to reflect newer and more efficient
technologies.

5. Structure and form of ANSI/ASHRAE/IES
Standard 90.1
In general, there are two means, or paths for building designers to comply with ASHRAE
90.1:
• Prescriptive path: All components of the building meet the minimum standards specified
by ASHRAE 90.1.
• Performance path: A proposed building design is demonstrated (through building
performance simulation) to use less energy than a baseline building built to ASHRAE 90.1
specifications.
• This now has three paths. For code compliance, there is Chapter 11, which compares an
energy model for your building to an energy model for a barely compliant building with
the same HVAC system, and in the 2016 edition an Appendix G path was added that
compares an energy model of your building against a baseline model based on the 2004
edition of Standard 90.1 and requires lower energy consumption that varies depending
on the building type.

6. ASHRAE Standard 90.1
Within the sections of the standard, there are some variations to this. Some sections have
mandatory provisions, simplified approaches, or trade-off opportunities.
Prescriptive path
• ASHRAE 90.1 includes prescriptive requirements for the following:
• Building envelope (Section 5): minimum wall insulation, minimum roof insulation, roof
reflectance, minimum glazing performance
• HVAC (Section 6): minimum equipment efficiency, minimum system features, limitation on
reheat, limitation on fan power
• Domestic hot water (Section 7): minimum equipment efficiency, minimum system features
• Power (Section 8): transformer efficiency, automatic receptacle controls, energy monitoring
• Lighting (Section 9): maximum indoor lighting power density (LPD, expressed in Watts/Sq.Ft.),
minimum lighting controls, exterior lighting, parking garage lighting
• Other equipment (Section 10): electric motors, potable water booster pumps, elevators, and
escalators

7. ASHRAE Standard 90.1
Performance path
• In the performance approach, a baseline energy cost budget (ECB) is established, based
on the building size and program. This baseline ECB is established using building
performance simulation to model a building with the same size and program as the
project building, built according to the prescriptive requirements of ASHRAE 90.1
(sections 5-10). The ECB is expressed in units of dollars.
• A building performance simulation is then performed on the proposed building design.
The proposed energy cost budget must be less than or equal to the baseline energy cost
budget to achieve compliance.
• The performance approach is also used to demonstrate design energy efficiency, often
expressed as percent better than ASHRAE Standard 90.1. Building designs will state their
performance as "40% better than ASHRAE 90.1-2007" or "20% better than ASHRAE 90.1-
2010". Percent improvement over ASHRAE 90.1 is the basis for awarding energy points
within the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system.

8. GSA and sustainable design
• Federal agencies must follow the 2020 Guiding Principles for
Sustainable Federal Buildings and optimize buildings' performance
while maximizing assets' life-cycle value. Federal agencies must make
annual progress toward 100 percent portfolio compliance with the
Guiding Principles.
• Use the Sustainable Design Checklist to track new construction and
major renovation projects' compliance with the Guiding Principles in
the categories of integrated design, energy, water, indoor
environmental quality, materials, and resilience. Regional project
delivery teams report Guiding Principles compliance, among other
sustainability details, via GSA's Kahua Sustainability App.

9. 2020 Guiding Principles for Sustainable Federal Buildings
• Purpose
Since 2002, the Federal Government has outlined its intent to advance
sustainable building principles and practices throughout its portfolio
established through a number of statutory and executive policies that every
Federal agency has integrated and utilized. These sustainable principles and
practices have been incorporated into six Guiding Principles for Sustainable
Federal buildings (Guiding Principles), to guide agencies in designing,
locating, constructing, maintaining, and operating Federal buildings in a
sustainable manner that increases efficiency, optimizes performance,
eliminates unnecessary use of resources, ensures the health of occupants,
protects the environment, generates cost savings, and mitigates risks to
assets, consistent with Agency and Department missions.

10. The Guiding Principles ensure Federal buildings:
1. Employ Integrated Design Principles
2. Optimize Energy Performance
3. Protect and Conserve Water
4. Enhance the Indoor Environment
5. Reduce the Environmental Impact of Materials
6. Assess and Consider Building Resilience

11. 1. Employ Integrated Design Principles
1.1. Integrated Design and Management
1.2. Sustainable Siting
1.3. Stormwater Management
1.4. Infrastructure Utilization and Optimization
1.5. Commissioning

12. 2. Optimize Energy Performance
2.1. Energy Efficiency
2.2. Energy Metering
2.3. Renewable Energy
2.4. Benchmarking

13. 3. Protect and Conserve Water
3.1. Indoor Water Use
3.2. Water Metering
3.3. Outdoor Water Use
3.4. Alternative Water

14. 4. Enhance the Indoor Environment
4.1. Ventilation and Thermal Comfort
4.2. Daylighting and Lighting Controls
4.3. Low-Emitting Materials and Products
4.4. Radon Mitigation
4.5. Moisture and Mold Control
4.6. Indoor Air Quality during Construction and Operations
4.7. Environmental Smoking Control
4.8. Integrated Pest Management
4.9. Occupant Health and Wellness

15. 5. Reduce the Environmental Impact of
Materials
5.1. Materials - Recycled Content
5.2. Materials - Biobased Content
5.3. Products
5.4. Ozone Depleting Substances
5.5. Hazardous Waste
5.6. Solid Waste Management

16. 6. Assess and Consider Building Resilience
6.1. Risk Assessment
6.2. Building Resilience and Adaptation

17. Sustainable Design Checklist

18. Embodied Carbon
• Embodied carbon is the carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions associated with materials
and construction processes throughout the whole lifecycle of a building or
infrastructure.
• It includes any CO₂ created during the manufacturing of building materials
(material extraction, transport to manufacturer, manufacturing), the transport of
those materials to the job site, and the construction practices used.
• Put simply, embodied carbon is the carbon footprint of a building or
infrastructure project before it becomes operational. It also refers to the CO₂
produced by maintaining the building and eventually demolishing it, transporting
the waste, and recycling it.
• Embodied carbon is distinct from operational carbon — the carbon that comes
from energy, heat, lighting, etc. Recent data from the World Green Building
Council indicates that embodied carbon is becoming a larger portion of a
building's overall carbon footprint.
• Cement — the key ingredient that gives concrete its strength — is also one of the
largest emitters of CO2 in the built environment.
• Since concrete is the most abundant human-made material in the world, cement
production creates ~7% of the world’s CO2 emissions and is the largest
contributor to embodied carbon in the built environment.

19. Tackling Embodied Carbon
• To address embodied carbon, a number of
organizations including Architecture
2030, Structural Engineers 2050
Challenge (SE2050), the Carbon
Leadership Forum, and the World Green
Building Council have jointly taken on a
mission to eliminate embodied carbon from
buildings by the year 2050.