Measured energy use and indoor environment quality in green office buildings in China

• Type A green’s energy use is significantly less than common only in HSCW.
• Energy uses of type A and B are 15% and 23% lower than upper limit values in HSCW.
• Green users are more satisfied than common on thermal comfort, IAQ, facilities, O&M.

Recently green buildings are booming rapidly in China. In order to improve the performance of green buildings, energy consumption in 31 and indoor environment quality(IEQ) in 10 green office buildings are compared with common ones through energy data collection, physical parameters measurement and satisfaction survey. The results indicate that for building type A (mix-mode), it is only in Hot-Summer Cold-Winter zone that green buildings’ energy consumption is statistically significantly less than common buildings. For type B (mechanically conditioned), no statistically significantly difference between green and common has been observed in all climate zones. It is also found that in Hot-Summer Cold-Winter zone the average energy consumption of type A and B are 15% and 23% lower than the upper limit values required by the Chinese standard [27]. However in other climate zones, they are above the upper limit. In terms of the IEQ and building service performance, the satisfaction of users in green is marked higher than that in common in the field of thermal comfort, indoor air quality(IAQ), facilities, operating & maintenance. In addition, factors affecting buildings’ energy consumption are analyzed in order to provide guidance for further enhancing the performance of green buildings in design and operation stages.