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The COVID-19 pandemic, through governmental stay-at-home orders, forced rapid changes to social human behavior and interrelations, targeting the work environments to protect workers and users. Rapidly, global organizations, US associations, and professionals stepped in to mitigate the virus's spread in buildings' living and work environments. The institutions proposed new air system HVAC settings without efficiency concerns, such as improved flow rates and filtering for irradiation, humidity, and temperature. Current literature consensually predicted an increase in energy consumption due to new measures to control the SARS-CoV-2 spread. The research team assumed the effort of validating the prior published outcomes, applied to US standardized high-rise office buildings, as defined and set by the key entities in the field, by resorting to a methodology based on software energy analysis. The study compares a standard high-rise office building energy consumption, and CO 2 emissions and operations costs in nine US climate zones — from 0 to 8, south to north latitudes, respectively —, assessed in specifically the most populated cities, between the previous and post COVID-19 scenarios. The outcomes clarify the gathered knowledge, explaining that climate zones above mixed-humid type (4) tend to increase relative energy use intensity by 21.72%, but below that threshold the zones decrease relative energy use intensity by 11.92%.

Detailed insights on energy use are missing for the building stock in Singapore that may aid reduction of energy consumption through a targeted approach. Therefore, we created two whole‐building energy models for a large commercial office building in the tropics representing a fully glazed and a concrete façade. We used Singapore's current building codes, which include compliance with local green‐rating system, and collaboration between two entities with first‐hand experience with design, construction, and operation of buildings in the tropics to define the models. The models provide a first step towards a set of standardized inputs and assumptions for office buildings in the tropics. The results show an energy use intensity of 146 kWh m−2 a−1. The three highest energy consumers are air conditioning and mechanical ventilation (43 %), lighting (29 %), and plug loads (21 %) whereas the two main sources of cooling loads are ventilation (29 %) and conduction and radiation through windows (20 %). Finally, we evaluated the effects of exterior shading on the fully glazed energy model to demonstrate the use of the models to building stakeholders.

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