When developing new projects, we aspire to create better buildings — in many ways. One aspect is in energy use. To create goals, we must have benchmarks to improve upon. Existing buildings provide those benchmarks. I am trying to compare Swedish hospitals and Pacific Northwest hospitals to see if the PNW can learn from the Swedish examples. First, I’ll look at the amount of energy that hospitals use now. These are averages of real hospitals that are in operation. In the US there is often just one meter for each kind of utility: electricity, gas, steam, etc. It is typical in Sweden, and actually mandated for new buildings, to separate “building energy” from “activity energy.” This is a description of the type of use that falls into each category:
Building energy use
building’s electricity, fans, pumps
cooling
heating tap water
room heating
heating and ventilation
Activity energy use
activity electricity, lighting
activity electricity, equipment
This chart demonstrates the difference between the baseline energy use in Sweden and in the Pacific Northwest.
Clearly Sweden has already addressed some of the energy use questions that we are just starting to ask. That is one reason that I am here. How are Swedish designers and engineers able to create buildings and systems that run so efficiently.
A couple more numbers to keep in mind that I just learned. Southern Sweden’s maximum energy use (“building energy use”) regulation for any new commercial building is 100 Kwh/m2/year (32 Kbtu/ft2/year). Any energy used beyond that must be produced. So really that is the maximum bought energy — or delivered energy — that is allowed for a new project.
There is also a new EU directive that will require energy labeling of all new and remodeled buildings for their energy use. There are definitions of how this energy must be metered and what conditioned area should be included in the calculations. Thus, energy use is going to be easily traceable for all of these buildings, for everyone. This will make benchmarking and creating comparisons between projects much easier. It will also create awareness about the amount of energy that buildings produce in an open, direct way. For more information on this directive visit this site.
