Sustainable residential building retrofit for improving energy efficiency: The owners’ perspective in Malaysia

Abstract

Malaysia has made continuous efforts to tackle energy sustainability challenges in recent years. There are significant opportunities to cut energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission (GHG) through retrofitting of existing domestic stocks. Due to the extremely fragmented nature of retrofit practice in the construction industry, there are some challenges among project stakeholders, including home occupants and builders in retrofitting residential buildings. There is a lack of research regarding the client’s requirements for housing retrofit priorities and preferences for retrofitting measures and materials. Therefore, the aim of this research is exploring the owner’s point of view for housing retrofit and their decision-making factors for choosing retrofit measures. In this study, by using sampling techniques, 400 people staying in Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru were selected for the housing retrofit preference survey. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software (SPSS Version 22) was used as a statistical software to analyze survey data. It was revealed from the questionnaire survey that window/door is the top priority for clients to improve energy efficiency. Furthermore, the most critical factors in improving energy efficiency are initial cost and thermal performance, respectively. Moreover, in decision-making factors for selecting construction materials, owners emphasized on initial cost and payback time as important factors. Therefore, all experts in the construction industry should take into account the interests of customers with technical matters at the same time. In conclusion, this research empowers professionals to know homeowner needs and preferences from the beginning of retrofit projects.

Auspicious Green Retrofit Strategies in Two-Story Terrace Houses: Case Study of Petaling Jaya Selangor Malaysia

“…Following the green strategies highlighted in Table 1, the generic model of the front façade of the terrace house is incorporated to express the designated building components with the extent of retrofitting associated during each level of interventions. priority when deciding on the building intervention from their perspectives (Kermanshahi et al, 2020). It has further stressed the need to educate homeowners about their deprived awareness of the consideration of sustainability in modifications and how their choices can minimize the impact on the environment.…”

Energy efficiency compliance towards benchmarking for intermittent use religious buildings

“…If compared with the study by Ismail et al (2016) who showed an energy saving of only 5% after replacement of electrical equipment, the saving of 24% in this mosque is quite large. The ROR calculation for this mosque is 27 years compared to the ROR of 20–25 years based on a study by Yau and Lim (2016), Kermanshahi et al (2020) and Lai et al (2020). Energy retrofit renovation work on existing buildings will involve higher costs than constructing buildings that have been planned from the beginning for this purpose.…”

Opposing approaches for enhancing energy efficiency in buildings

“…Despite constructing many new buildings incorporating SusD every year, many countries will have very high proportion of such high energy consuming buildings in future, e.g. 80 % of all residential buildings in Malaysia will be in this category by 2050 [12], and 95 % of such buildings consume much higher energy than newly constructed buildings using SusD [13]. Such old but economically viable buildings are suggested to be equipped with energy efficient and modern 'green features' using 'greening existing buildings'(GEB) approach, whenever suitable, aiming at improvement in building energy efficiency and consequent reduction in CO2 emissions [10,[14][15][16][17][18]42].…”