Case-based Comparative Study Of Sino-US Energy-efficient Office Buildings’ Energy Consumption Level

The comparative study of the energy consumption level of Sino-USenergy-efficient buildings is the foundation of promotion and application of greenbuildings in our country, which is of great significance to seek a suitable integratedtechnology system for green buildings in different climate zones of China. Thedifferences of the energy saving policy emphasis, energy saving evaluation method,energy consumption statistics and macro energy consumption data system betweenChina and US make it hard to find out the differences of the energy consumption ofenergy-efficient buildings through the macro contrast at the national level. So this papermainly calculates the size of Sino-US differences of typical energy-efficient officebuildings and analyzes the reason for the differences through the case studies. Thecomparison of the energy consumption level of typical building cases is made mainlyfrom four aspects of the whole building, air conditioning system, lighting systems andinterior equipments. The size and reasons of Sino-US differences of the energyconsumption level of different groups of building cases are analyzed by using themeasured data of the investigation, combining the climatic condition, building basicinformation and energy saving technology path, and selecting four pairs of typicalenergy-efficient office buildings as cases in the similar climate zones of the twocountries, with the priority to the Chinese cases and the posteriority to the Americancases with the purpose of enhancing the comparability.Contrasts show that the differences of the mean energy consumption level of fourpairs of typical energy-efficient office buildings in the two countries were not obvious,the energy consumption level of Chinese buildings seemed slightly lower than that ofthe American ones by comparison, the energy consumption difference ofair-conditioning system was the smallest through the comparative study of the majorindividual parts of the energy consumption system, the differences of the whole energyconsumption were mainly created by the differences of the lighting system and interiorequipment system, the differences of the two countries were not clear in the aspects ofthe equipment efficiency and system design, and the energy consumption created bythe human energy consumption behaviors was the basic reason for the energyconsumption difference in the two countries.