Energy Policy 38 (2010) 76877697

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Energy Policy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol

A method of identifying and weighting indicators of energy efciency assessment in Chinese residential buildings
Yulan Yang a,b, Baizhan Li a, Runming Yao c,a,n
a

Key Laboratory of the Three Gorges Reservoir Regions Eco-Environment under the Ministry of Education, Chongqing University, Chongqing, PR China College of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, PR China c School of Construction Management and Engineering, University of Reading, Reading, UK
b

a r t i c l e in fo
Article history: Received 10 March 2010 Accepted 6 August 2010 Available online 15 September 2010 Keywords: Energy efciency Residential buildings Assessment indicators

abstract
This paper describes a method of identifying and weighting indicators for assessing the energy efciency of residential buildings in China. A list of indicators of energy efciency assessment in residential buildings in the hot summer and cold winter zone in China has been proposed, which supplies an important reference for policy makings in energy efciency assessment in buildings. The research method applies a wide-ranging literature review and a questionnaire survey involving experts in the eld. The group analytic hierarchy process (group AHP) has been used to weight the identied indicators. The size of survey samples are sufcient to support the results, which has been validated by consistency estimation. The proposed method could also be extended to develop the weighted indicators for other climate zones in China. & 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Since 2006, the process of Chinese energy efciency in buildings has entered the third stage, which involves implementation of energy efcient building design codes, assessment and evaluation, and labelling and inspection (Li and Yao, 2009). So far, China has established various codes of energy efciency in buildings which aim to achieve 50% energy conservation in buildings based on 1980s standards, with even more ambition target of 65% reduction for the four municipalities (Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjing, and Chongqing). The main existing building energy efciency design and assessment codes in China are listed in Table 1. However, the policy development of building energy efciency assessment and labelling lags behind the development of design codes. Although these design codes have been developed over a decade, there is little published information in assessing the effectiveness of implementation. The effectiveness of implementation of codes will continue to be the most difcult part for building energy codes in China (Feng et al., 2009). As one of the important measures of tackling weakness of energy codes implementation in China, some building energy efciency assessment policies have been proposed. For example, the Evaluation standard for energy efcient buildings (collecting comments vision) provides a method of assessing the energy
n Corresponding author at: School of Construction Management and Engineering, University of Reading, Whightknights PO Box 219, Reading, RG6 6AW, UK. Tel.: +441183788606; fax: + 441183783856. E-mail address: r.yao@reading.ac.uk (R. Yao).

efcient building; however, its indicators are not weighted. The Technical guides for building energy efciency testing and labelling (China academy of building research, 2005) assesses the building energy efciency based on the building energy simulation results, however, computer simulations for energy consumptions in buildings are suitable for using in the design stage but it is not capable of comprehensively assessment of energy efciency (Chen et al., 2006). In addition, the code of Evaluation standard for green building GB 50378-2006 and the code of Technical standard for performance assessment of residential buildings GB/T 50362-2005 assess building from a relative wide cope beyond energy efciency. Internationally, there exist many building environmental or green building assessment methods, such as the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, LEED (United States Green Building Council, 2000), the British Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method, BREEAM (Ecohomes, 2006). However, these methods assess building from the perspective of the impact and sustainability of the built environment. It is also reported that a reduction in energy use is not necessarily the case for every green building (Birt and Newsham, 2009). Therefore, they are not suitable to assess and thereafter to label energy efciency in buildings. There is an urgent need to develop an appropriate method for the assessment of energy efciency in buildings in the Chinese context. On behalf of the Chinese Ministry of Urban and Rural Housing Development, the project entitled Assessing energy efciency technology in buildings and development of an energy-efcient building labelling system in China has been carried out since 2007. It aims to propose methods suitable for the assessment of the energy

0301-4215/$ - see front matter & 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2010.08.018

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efciency of buildings. Indicators identication plays a key role in building energy efciency assessment method development. It is also essential to assign weights to the identied indicators in developing the method for building energy efciency assessment as the role of the weight serves to express the importance of each indicator relative to the others in a quantitative way. The climate in China is diverse and therefore ve climate zones have been categorised into the very cold zone, cold zone, hot summer and cold winter zone, hot summer and warm winter zone, and the mild zone (Ministry of Construction

of China, 1993). The aim of this research is to produce indicators and their prioritising weights for energy efciency assessment in residential buildings in the hot summer and cold winter zone in China by applying a rigorous method Group AHP method for decision makings. The research method can be extended to the similar work in other regions and countries.

2. Research approaches 2.1. Method for the derivation of indicators

Table 1 The main existing energy efciency codes and standards for buildings in China. Design Design Standard for Energy Efciency of Residential Buildings (version for collecting comments) (Ministry of Housing and UrbanRural Development of China, 2006a) The design code for building thermal properties. GB 50176-93 The design standard for energy conservation for heated residential buildings. JGJ 26-95 Design standard for the energy efciency of residential buildings in the hot summer and cold winter zone. JGJ 134-2001 Design standard for energy efciency of residential buildings in the hot summer and warm winter zone. JGJ 75-2003 Design standard for the energy efciency of public buildings. GB 50189-2005 Design standard for heating, ventilation and air-conditioning. GB 50019-2003 Standard for lighting design of buildings. GB 50034-2004 Design code for urban residential planning. GB 50180-93 Evaluation standard for energy efcient building (version for collecting comments) (Ministry of Housing and UrbanRural Development of China, 2007) Technical guides for building energy efciency testing and labelling (Ministry of Housing and UrbanRural Development of China, 2006b) Evaluation standard for green building. GB 50378-2006 Technical standard for performance assessment of residential buildings. GB/T 50362-2005

Assessment

The current study for identifying indicators of energy efciency assessment methods in China has diverse focuses. Wang (2006) proposed an indicator list focusing on building envelopes. Liu et al. (2006) proposed an indicator list focusing on economics. Ding et al. (2003) proposed 17 indictors based on the Design standard for energy efciency of residential buildings in the hot summer and cold winter zone JGJ 134-2001, again focusing on building envelopes. Cong et al. (2007) proposed an indicator list excluding the factors such as indoor thermal environment and building operation and management which are the main aspects of building energy efciency assessment. In order to establish a comprehensive set of indicators of the energy efcient assessment method for residential buildings, a combination of reviewing existing methods, energy codes and academic research papers has been conducted. The method of indicator identication is illustrated in Fig. 1. A three-step process has been conducted in this method. The rst step, a full range of indicators relating to the energy efciency, has been collected through a wide-ranging literature review. In step 2, a draft indicator list has been selected from the full indicator list based on an in-depth analysis. In step 3, a questionnaire survey has been conducted in order to get the comments from the experts to rene the draft indicators. As a result, a nal indictor list has been proposed.

Worldwide existing building assessment methods

Energy codes for buildings in China

Academic research papers and reports

Indicator input Full indicator list

1.Feasibility rule. 2.Complete rule 3.Effective rule 4.Multiply attributes decision making rule

Indicator selection

Draft indicator list

Survey

Indicator refine

Final indicator list

Fig. 1. Method for indicator identication.

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In step 1, based on reviewing the existing references listed in Tables 1 and 2, 83 indicators have been collected, see Table 3. The references are from the following three main resources:

In step 2, 25 indicators have been rened from the indicators listed in Table 3 and they form a draft indicators list (Yang et al., 2008) (see Appendix 1) according to the following four rules: (1) Feasibility rule: This rule requires the possibility that an indicator could be assessed at the current technology or policy level. In the light of this rule, we lter out the following indicators from Table 3: All-year electricity consumption,

 worldwide existing assessment methods in the building  

context; energy codes for buildings in China; and academic research papers and reports.

Table 2 Sources of building energy efciency assessment indicators. Category Worldwide existing building assessment methods (partly) Reference Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, LEED British Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method, BREEAM Comprehensive Assessment System for Building Environmental Efciency, CASBEE (Japan Institute of Sustainable Building, 2005) GBTool 2005 (IiSBE, 2008) Sustainable Project appraisal Routing, SpeAR(r) (ARUP, 2007) EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (Directive 2002/91/EC) Graduation and test method for air permeability performance of windows. GB/T 71070-2002 Code for acceptance of energy efcient building construction. GB 50411-2007 Graduation and test method for thermal insulating properties of windows. GB/T 8484-2002 Graduation and test method for thermal insulation properties of doors and windows. GB/T 8484-2008 Graduation and test method for air permeability, watertightness and wind load resistance performance for building external windows and doors. GB/T 7106-2008 The minimum allowable values of the energy efciency and energy efciency grades for room air conditioners. GB12021.3-2004 Residential building code. GB 50368-2005 Indoor air quality standard. GB/T 18883-2002 Safety code for manufacture and installation of lifts. GB7588-2003 Construction of an evaluation criterion system for building energy conservation (Liu et al., 2006) The construction of a comprehensive assessment indictor system for building energy conservationhot summer and cold winter area (Ding et al., 2003) Assessment of comprehensive energy-conserving results for buildings (Wang, 2006) The assessment method for residential building energy conservation (Chen, 2003)

Energy codes for buildings in China (besides Table 1)

Academic research papers and reports (Partly)

Table 3 The full indicators for building energy efciency assessment. Indicator 1. Location of building 4. Water conservation 7. Green power 10. Recycle of building material 13. Management of indoor air quality of construction site 16. Natural lighting and outdoor scenery 19. Dry space 22. Outdoor lighting 25. Infrastructure of residential building 29. Work at Home 31. Energy conservation guides for occupants 35. Use of ground heat 38. Direct use of renewable energy sources 41. Ventilation facilities 44. Lift facilities 47. Use of rain water 50. Use of green building materials 53. Avoid the use of Freon and Halon gases 56. Indoor air quality 59. All-year electricity consumption 62. Cost and economy 65. Glaze ratio of wall 69. Airtightness of external windows 72. Plant covering ratio of residential area 75. Colour of external building envelopes 78. Plant cover of roofs 81. Heat measurement of central heating system Indicator 2. Outdoor plant covering area 5. CO2 emission 8. Management of construction waste 11. Monitoring of indoor CO2 14. Control of air-conditioning system 17. 20. 23. 27. 30. 33. 36. 39. 42. 45. 48. 51. 54. 57. 60. 63. 67. 70. 73. 76. 79. 82. Minimise the energy resources consumption Environment-friendly labelling of building facilities Public transportation Articial lighting facilities Acoustic insulation Considerate builders Indoor acoustic environment Indirect use of renewable energy sources Lighting facilities Energy-efcient building facilities Reuse of resources Reuse of building envelopes Orientation of building Refund of energy conservation investment Awareness of energy conservation Social impacts Shape of building Reduction of incoming solar radiation to residential areas Distance between buildings Use of solar energy Hourly heating load calculation Energy efciency of pumped central heating systems Indicator 3. Reduction of lighting pollution 6. Optimisation of energy use 9. Reuse of material resources 12. Improvement of ventilation efciency 15. Humidity of the indoor thermal environment 18. Thermal properties of building envelope 21. Indoor lighting 24. Storage space for bicycles 28.Renewable and low-carbon energy sources 31. Private space 34. Use of innovative techniques 37. Indoor visual environment 40. Air-conditioning facilities 43. Hot water supply 46. Management of building operation 49. Project plan 52. Reuse of building materials 55. Emission of greenhouse gasses 58. Use of industry waste water 61. Electromagnetic pollution 64. Noise 68. Ventilation 71. Density of residential building area 74. Integrated part-load value (IPLV) 77. Shading coefcient of external windows 80. Hourly cooling load calculation 83. Energy efciency of water supply system

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Minimum energy sources consumption, Green power, CO2 Emission. This is because currently, the Chinese authorities do not provide benchmarks for All-year electricity consumption and Minimum energy sources consumption, neither the national nor local power grids labels the Green power. Calculating the CO2 emission value of a building poses difculties at the present time due to the lack of a national calculation method. (2) Completeness rule: This rule requires that the identied indicator list should cover the main aspects of residential building energy efciency assessment. (3) Effectiveness rule: This rule requires that the identied indicator list should ignore some issues that have minimal impact on the residential building energy efciency assessment. Therefore, the following indicators have been erased from Table 3: Reduction of lighting pollution, Dry space, Public transportation, Store space for bicycles, Work at home, Private space, Avoidance of the use of Freon and Halon, and Electromagnetic pollution. (4) Multi-attribute decision making (MADM) rule: The MADM rule requires some conditions such as a reasonable number of mutually exclusive indicators. Yoon and Hwang (1995) stated that seven plus represents the greatest amount, minus two represents the least amount of information that an observer can give us about an object on the basis of an absolute judgment. Mutually exclusive indicators would help prevent undesirable double-counting when weighting them. Thereafter, the remaining indicators are categorised into six categories: Space heating and cooling load, Efciency of building facilities, Use and reuse of construction material, Operation and management, Use of renewable energy and Indoor comfort and health. 2.2. Questionnaire survey In step 3, a survey has been conducted in order to rene the draft indicator list. 82 copies of questionnaires survey were sent out, and 65 completed sets were received and thus a nal 17 indicators for energy efciency assessment in residential buildings in the hot summer and cold winter zone has been proposed, as listed in Table 4. By analysing the comments collected from the survey, the nal indicator list has been rened by the following main points: (1) Indoors air quality and acoustic environment are added to the nal indicator list. Energy saving should not be at the cost of worsening indoor air quality. The acoustic environment has an impact on human behaviours such as opening windows and outdoors activities, etc., which should be considered as part of the building energy efciency assessment. (2) The indicators of Energy cost for operation of building and Reclaim periods of building energy efcient investment have been omitted from the lists because they are insufcient to assess the economic performance relating to building energy efciency according to the survey results. (3) The nal building energy efciency assessment indicators list does not include energy consumption in producing building material. This is because of the lack of comprehensive and complete database of energy performance of building materials in China. It will envisage practical problem if it is included. Furthermore, through a buildings life cycle, energy consumed at the stage of building material manufacturing and building construction accounts for about 20%, therefore, building energy efciency assessment mainly focuses on the stage of

Table 4 Final list of indicators for energy efciency assessment in residential buildings in the hot summer and cold winter zone in China. Order Categories 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 CT1. Building design Indicators

A1. Orientation of building A2. Shape of building A3. Outdoor environment CT2. Performance of envelope B1. Insulation of envelope B2. Airtightness of envelope B3. Outdoor and indoor shadow CT3. Energy efciency of C1. HV&AC facilities building facilities C2. Lighting facilities C3. Water supply facilities C4. Lifts CT4. Building operation and D1. Operation schedule of shared management facilities D2. Qualication of building manager D3. Energy efciency knowledge training & advertisement D4. Energy consumption statistics & public awareness CT5. Comfort and health E1. Humidity of indoor thermal environment E2. Indoor lighting and acoustic environment E3. Indoor air quality

design and operation (The Building Energy Research Center of Tsinghua University, 2007). 3. Using group AHP to weight identied indicators 3.1. Group AHP weighting method The role of weighting serves to express the importance of each indicator relative to the others in a quantitative way. There are many methods that can be used to determine the weightings of indicators. These methods can be classied into two categories. One is the objective category, which calculates the weight by the numerical value of each indicator. The essence of this category is that the larger the difference among the numerical values of the indicator, the larger the weight of the indicator. Vice versa, the weight is smaller when the difference among the values of the indicator is smaller. The objective category mainly includes the principal component analysis method, the factor analysis method, the grey incidence method, the entropy value method, the rank sum ratio method, etc. The factor analysis method and the entropy value method are commonly used in the objective category. The drawback of the methods in the objective category is that neither the decision makers concern nor the experts experiences are taken into account. Edwards and Newman (1982) stated that weights should reect the purpose of the evaluation; the weights themselves indicate what the decision maker is most concerned about in the decision or assessment. Therefore, we do not think the methods of this category are suitable for weighting the indicators of energy efciency assessment buildings. The other category is the subjective category. The decision maker judges the relative importance of the indicator by his/her personal judgment. The subjective category includes Delphi, analytic hierarchy process (AHP), simple rank order, ratio weighting, etc. Delphi and AHP are two commonly used methods in this category. The Delphi method is a systematic interactive forecasting method for obtaining forecasts from a panel of independent experts. The carefully selected experts answer questionnaires in two or more rounds. Participants are encouraged to revise their earlier answers in light of the replies of the other members of the panel. The process is identied as complete after a pre-dened

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criterion is achieved (e.g. number of rounds, achievement of consensus, and stability of results). The most important advantage of the Delphi method is that it leads to a group decision. Group decisions have many merits such as the avoidance of the extreme judgement of individual assessors. However, the drawback of the Delphi method is that it is very time-consuming and expensive due to more than one round being needed. The AHP method, developed by Saaty (1990) in the 1970s, is an approach to solving multi-criteria decision making problems of choice and prioritisation. The AHP method can be used to produce a group decision with only one round, which consumes less time and lower cost compared with the Delphi method. Aczel and Saaty (1983) proved that the geometric mean is the appropriate rule to combine individual judgments to a group judgment in AHP, since it preserves the reciprocal property of the judgment matrix. Saaty and Luis (2005) demonstrated two ways for AHP to construct a welfare function for a group from an individual function. Saaty and Shang (2007) presented an application of AHP in a group decision system (voting system). There are at least two ways for a group to weight the indicators in energy efciency assessment in buildings. One is group members meeting to arrive at a consensus while the other is forming individual members judgments in order to produce a group judgment by the geometric mean of the individual comparison matrices. For the rst way, members meet as a group and strive for consensus. This approach is attractive, nevertheless, it is expensive in money and time, and has the disadvantage of becoming worse when experts are far away from each other and 0 q m 2 m a1 11 a11 , . . ., a11 , B q B B m a1 a2 , . . . , am , B 21 21 21 AB B^ B q @ m 2 m a1 n1 an1 , . . ., an1 , q m 2 m a1 12 a12 , . . ., a12 , q m 2 m a1 22 a22 , . . ., a22 , ^ q m 2 m a1 n2 an2 , . . ., an2 ,

Table 5 Nine-point assessment expression of AHP. aij 1 3 5 7 9 2,4,6,8 Denition Indicator i and indicator j are of equal importance Indicator i is less important than indicator j Indicator i is more important than indicator j Indicator i is demonstrably more important than indicator j Indicator i is absolutely more important than indicator j Intermediate values between the above pairs of adjacent judgments

referenced to the nine-point method recommend by Saaty and e listed in Table 5, i 1,2,y,n; j 1,2,y,n; ae ji 1/aij. Step 2: Synthesize each individual comparison matrices to produce group comparison matrices. The AHP method can be used in both individual and group decision (Robson, 2002). In a group decision, the AHP method does not limit the number of members of the group. Larger number of members leads to a greater calculation load which does not exceed the current commonly used personal computers calculation ability. In step 2, individual comparison matrices are synthesized to group comparison matrices by the geometric mean of the individual comparison matrices. The detailed calculation can be seen in following formula. The vector (X1,X2,y,Xn) relating to the maximum eigenvalue of A implies the weight of the indicators.

. . ., . . .,

. . .,

q 1 m 2 m a1 1n a1n , . . ., a1n q C C m 2 m C a1 2n a2n , . . ., a2n C C C ^ C p A m 2 , . . . , an a a1 nn nn nn

busy. If a consensus cannot be obtained by using the rst method, the second method should be considered as an alternative. In this paper, we use the group AHP method to weight the indicators in energy efciency assessment in buildings by the second method. This involves the following steps. Step 1: Collection of individual comparison matrices from the questionnaire survey. In this step, a questionnaire survey involving acknowledged experts has been carried out to attain individual comparison matrices. AHP requires the decision maker to have the knowledge and, furthermore, some experience in the eld. In other words, the AHP method relies on each assessor in the survey being an expert in the eld. The questionnaire has been designed using the nine-point method recommended by Saaty and it conforms to the paired comparison requirement of the AHP method based on the nal indicator list. We contacted the individual experts separately to get the lled questionnaire. Suppose there are m lled questionnaires to weight n indicators, the individual comparison matrix from the expert e can be listed as follows: 0 e 1 a11 , ae . . ., ae 12 , 1n B ae , ae , . . ., ae C B 21 22 2n C C Ae B B^ ^ ^ C @ A ae . . ., ae ae nn : n1 , n2 , Aethe individual comparison matrix from the expert e, e 1,2,y,m, ae ijrelative importance between indicator i and indicator j based on the judgement of expert e, the value

Agroup comparison matrix: mThere are m experts in the group. Step 3: Consistency estimation. Inconsistency exists in most assessments, which could lead to incorrect results. A typical example of inconsistency in a paired comparison is as follows: A is more important than B, B is more important than C; however, C is assessed more important than A when comparison of the importance between A and C is made. The AHP method estimates the consistency beyond the above inconsistency, because it covers the degree of inconsistency, for instance, A has double importance over B, B has triple importance over C, then A should have six times the importance over C, other assessments of the paired comparison between A and C lead to inconsistency in AHP. The method to estimate the consistency in AHP can be shown as follows:

(1) Calculating the consistency index (C.I.) by Eq. (1): C:I:

lmax n
n1

lmax: The maximum eigenvalue of a comparison matrix; n:

There are n rows and n columns in a comparison matrix (i.e. there are n indicators needing to be weighted). (2) Identifying the random index (R.I.) of consistency. Saaty provided the R.I. in Table 6, for n 111, the sample is 500, for n 1215, the sample is 100. (3) Calculating the consistency ratio (C.R.).

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The C.R. is calculated in terms of the following Eq. (2). Saaty stated that a C.R. less than 0.1 is accepted (Saaty, 1990); otherwise, a new comparison matrix needs to be reconstructed to weight the indicators: C:R: C:I: : R :I: 2

3.2. Questionnaire survey A questionnaire survey which aims to weight the nal indicators in the hot summer cold and winter zone in China has been conducted with the experts in building energy efciency assessment. We selected the experts by these rules: (1) He/she has at least three years work experience in the eld of building energy efciency. (2) He/she has one or more than one paper relevant to building energy efciency published. (3) He/she has a formal professional title of engineer or associate professor at least. (4) He/she is currently employed by a formal university or building consultancy or building construction organization. We used the snowball sampling method to select qualied experts in our survey. 54 questionnaires have been distributed, 32

lled questionnaires received, 2 lled questionnaires are ineffective, and 30 lled questionnaires are effective. Afliation types of the experts involved in the survey are mainly from academy, builder and consultancy, 67% of respondents are from an academy with practical experiences, 20% are from a builder or the building industry and 13% are from a building consultancy. The current career lengths of the experts involved in the survey ranging from 3 to 20 years more, 54% experts have 1115 years work experience, 33% have 310 years work experience, 10% have 1620 years experience and 3% have more than 20 years work experience. From the distribution of the survey subjects, we can see that the survey mainly oriented to academics with practical experiences. This could be a limitation according to conventional survey method; however, this limitation can be compensated by the Group decision method. Group decision method enjoys the advantages of more fair judgement and tackling extreme individual (Robert and Ernest, 1992). According to the AHP method, the numerical value of an element in a comparison matrix is determined by the members judgement under Saatys nine-point scale listed in Table 5. It is obvious that there is confusion in understanding the similar text descriptions. To avoid misunderstanding the text, we use a chart to help the assessor to judge the relative importance of the indicators in the questionnaire design. An example of the questionnaire on weighting indicators is in Appendix 2.

Table 6 Random index (R.I.) in AHP (Saaty, 1990). n RI 1 0 2 0 3 0.58 4 0.90 5 1.12 6 1.24 7 1.32 8 1.41 9 1.45 10 1.49 11 1.51 12 1.48 13 1.56 14 1.57 15 1.59

Table 7 The group comparison matrix of categories (G matrix 1). CT1. Building CT2. Performance design of envelope CT1. Building design CT2. Performance of envelope CT3. Energy efciency of building facilities CT4. Building operation and management CT5. Comfort and health 1.00 1.04 1.07 1.14 1.23 0.96 1.00 0.98 1.01 1.06 CT3. Energy efciency of building facilities 0.94 1.03 1.00 0.83 1.11 CT4. Building operation and management 0.88 0.99 1.23 0.93 1.14 CT5. Comfort and health 0.82 0.95 0.90 0.88 1.00 Vector relating to maximum eigenvalue 0.4048 0.4434 0.4606 0.4205 0.5005

Table 8 The group comparison matrix of indicators of CT1 building design (G matrix 2). A1: Orientation of building A1: Orientation of building A2: Shape of building A3: Outdoor environment 1.00 0.56 0.79 A2: Shape of building 1.77 1.00 1.15 A3: Outdoor environment 1.27 0.87 1.00 Vector relating to maximum eigenvalue 0.7305 0.4383 0.5237

Table 9 The comparison group matrix of indicators of CT2 performance of envelope (G matrix 3). B1: Insulation of envelope B1: Insulation of envelope B2: Airtightness of envelope B3: Outdoor and indoor shadow 1.00 0.42 0.67 B2: Airtightness of envelope 2.39 1.00 1.32 B3: Outdoor and indoor shadow 1.50 0.76 1.00 Vector relating to maximum eigenvalue 0.7852 0.3256 0.5267

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3.3. Weighting indicators Based on Table 4, each effective lled-out questionnaire yields 6 comparison matrices: the comparison matrix of categories

(matrix 1), the comparison matrix of indicators of CT1 building design (matrix 2), the comparison matrix of indicators of CT2 performance of envelope (matrix 3), the comparison matrix of indicators of CT3 energy efciency of building facilities

Table 10 The group comparison matrix of indicators of CT3 Energy efciency of building facilities (G Matrix 4). C1: HV&AC facilities C1: C2: C3: C4: HV&AC facilities Lighting facilities Water supply facilities Lifts 1.00 0.24 0.19 0.21 C2: Lighting facilities 4.09 1.00 0.41 0.60 C3: Water supply facilities 5.40 2.42 1.00 1.10 C4: Lifts Vector relating to maximum eigenvalue 0.9309 0.2865 0.1467 0.1725

4.87 1.59 0.91 1.00

Table 11 The group comparison matrix of indicators of CT4 building operation and management (G matrix 5). D1: Operation schedule of shared facilities D1: Operation schedule of shared facilities D2: Qualication of building manager D3: Energy efciency knowledge training and advertisement D4: Energy consumption statistics and public awareness 1.00 0.61 0.65 D2: Qualication of D3: Energy efciency building manager knowledge, training and advertisement 1.63 1.00 0.82 1.54 1.22 1.00 D4: Energy consumption statistics and public awareness 2.19 1.33 1.45 Vector relating to maximum eigenvalue 0.7115 0.4681 0.4240

0.45

0.72

0.70

1.00

0.3079

Table 12 The group comparison matrix of indicators of CT5 comfort and health (G matrix 6). E1: Humidity of indoor thermal environment E1: Indoor thermal humid environment E2: Indoor lighting and acoustic environment E3: Indoor air quality 1.00 0.27 1.04 E2: Indoor lighting and acoustic environment 3.72 1.00 3.06 E3: Indoor air quality 0.96 0.33 1.00 Vector relating to maximum eigenvalue 0.7039 0.2056 0.6799

Fig. 2. Weights of indicators of residential building energy efciency assessment in the hot summer and cold winter zone.

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(matrix 4), the comparison matrix of indicators of CT4 building operation and management (matrix 5), and the comparison matrix of indicators of CT5 comfort and health (matrix 6). 30 effective lled-out questionnaires yield 180 comparison matrices in total. Using group AHP, these 180 comparison matrices have been combined to form 6 group comparison matrices as: G matrix 1, G matrix 2, G matrix 3, G matrix 4, G matrix 5, and G matrix 6. Vectors relating to the maximum eigenvalue of the above 6 group matrices are calculated using Matlab 6.0. These 6 group matrices and vectors are listed in Tables 712, respectively. Weightings of indicators of residential building energy efciency assessment in the hot summer cold winter zone have been worked out and demonstrated in Fig. 2.

From Fig. 2, we can see the following:

 C1. HV&AC facilities has the maximum weighting of 0.13, i.e.

HV&AC facilities is the most important indicator of residential building energy efciency assessment in the hot summer and cold winter zone. B1. Insulation of envelope, E1. Indoor thermal humid environment and E3. Indoor air quality are the three important indicators due to they each having a weighting of 0.10. C3. Water supply facilities and C4. Lifts share a weighting of 0.02. That means both of these are the less important indicators in residential building energy efciency assessment in the hot summer and cold winter zone.

 

Matrix 1 0.12 0.10 Consistency Ratio 0.08 0.06 0.04 0.02 0.00 Matrix 2 Matrix 3 Matrix 4 Matrix 5 Matrix 6 Accepted maximum

0.12 0.1 0.08 0.06 0.04 0.02 0 Group Matrix 1 Group Matrix 2 Group Matrix 3 Group Matrix 4 Group Matrix 5 Group Matrix 6

Consistency Ratio.

Consistency Ratio

Fig. 5. The relationship between the number of experts used in the group comparison matrices and the consistency ratio.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32
Expert Identification
Fig. 3. Consistency ratio of individual comparison matrices.

Real value

Accepted maximum

Fig. 4. Consistency ratio of group comparison matrices.

0.45 0.4 0.35 0.3 0.25 0.2 0.15 0.1 0.05 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Number of experts involved in the survey Group Matrix 1 Group Matrix 3 Group Matrix 5 Accepted maximum Group Matrix 2 Group Matrix 4 Group Matrix 6

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3.4. Consistency analysis According to the group AHP method, the consistency ratio (C.R.) represents the consistency of judgments. The less the value of C.R. is, the more reliable the judgement is. Fig. 3 shows the C.R. of 180 comparison matrices by experts individual judgement. From Fig. 3, we can see that the C.R. of each individual comparison matrix is less than 0.1. Therefore, the consistency of individual judgement is acceptable in this assessment process. Fig. 4 shows the C.R. of group comparison matrices. From Fig. 4, we can see that the C.R. is far less than 0.10 in each group comparison matrix. This means the consistency of group judgements is satisfactory in this survey. The size of the subjects determines credibility of judgments and it also determines the consistency of judgment. Fig. 5 demonstrates the C.R. trends of group comparison matrices. From Fig. 5, we can see that, the C.R. decreases with the incensement of the number of subjects. The C.R. stabilises maintaining less than 0.05 when the subject size is greater than 17. The size of 30 subjects in this survey is sufcient to ensure the credibility of the judgement. Beside the size of the subjects, individual extreme preference can be avoided by group AHP method. We take the Indicator C1: HV&AC facilities as an example. C1s weightings by individual experts have been demonstrated in Fig. 6. From Fig. 6, we can see that the maximum weighting is 0.35 voted by the expert no. 29, and the minimum weighting is 0.03 by expert nos. 1 and 9. Thus, we can see the great difference among experts. However by implement of group AHP, the weighting of C1 is 0.13. Therefore, it is obvious that the group AHP provides a method to avoid the extreme preference of expert nos. 1 and 9.

of building energy assessment regulations. A building energy efciency assessment model has been proposed (Yang, 2009), see Fig. 7. It is assumed that there are L indicators for building energy efciency assessment and N assessment grades. There are three key steps to assess building energy efciency using this model. Firstly, building energy efciency is assessed by assigning belief to each grade based on each indicator. Secondly, each grade is assigned with integrated belief using an algorithm based on evidential reasoning approach (Yang and Singh, 1994). Finally, the building energy efciency is assigned with a grade by the maximum integrated belief. Therefore, it is obvious that indicators identication is one of the key elements in building energy efciency labelling assessment. We have developed a new method for residential building energy efciency assessment in hot summer and cold winter zone in China based on the above model applying these 17 identied indicators illustrated in this paper and four building energy efciency grades has been applied as Pass, Copper, Silver, and Gold. Due to the page limitation, we will introduce a paper about the building energy labelling method in detail separately.

5. Conclusions Energy efciency assessment for buildings in the Chinese context is urgently needed. There is a great deal of challenges for the energy policy makers due to the diversity of climates and the complexity of buildings usage functions. Identifying assessment indicators plays a key role in developing energy efciency assessment modelling. Through this study, following conclusions can be drawn: (1) In developing assessment indicators of energy efciency in buildings in China, the factors of climate diversity and building types should be taken into account. Therefore, various indicate sets for different climate zones and building types should be established. Identifying assessment indicators requires rigorous method of solving multi-criteria decision making problems of choice and prioritisation in policy makings. This paper introduces a comprehensive method of identifying indicators for energy efciency assessment in buildings applying feasibility, completeness, effectiveness and multi-attribute decision making (MADM) rules. A list (Table 4) of weighted 17 indicators of energy efciency assessment for residential buildings in the Hot Summer and Cold Winter Zone in China has been proposed based on the experts knowledge and experiences by applying the Group AHP method, which is composed of ve categories of CT1building design, CT2performance of envelope, CT3energy efciency in building facilities, CT4building operation and management, and CT5comfort and health.

4. Building energy efciency rating system The weighted indicators are essential to the building energy efciency rating method and thus contribute to the establishment

0.35 0.28

weights

0.22 0.22 0.16 0.17 0.17 0.14 0.07 0.03 0.18 0.15 0.15 0.09 0.07 7 0.05 0.03 0.04 0.03 0.11 0.09 0.04 0.03 0.07 0.03 0.04 0.03 0.05 0.19 0.17

Expert Id
Fig. 6. Weights of C1: the HV&AC facilities indicator by individual experts.

Fig. 7. Building energy efciency labelling model.

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(2) The group AHP method does not need large size of expert subjects so long as the consistency ratio (C.R.) is less than 0.1. In this study, 30 subjects are involved and the C.R. of the group metrics is less than 0.05. This means the judgement of the indicators priority is very reliable. Furthermore, the group AHP method can avoid individual extreme preference in decision makings. The group AHP decision method enjoys many advantages, such as a democratic and fair judgement, avoiding extreme individual preference. This method is recommended to be extended to the establishment of assessment indicators of energy efciency in buildings for other four climate zones in China. (3) The current Evaluation standard for energy efcient building (collecting comments vision) in China proposes a method to assess energy efciency in buildings without relying on building energy consumption computer simulations though; it does not weight its indicators. Therefore the proposed method introduced in this paper has provided a useful comprehensive reference for policy revision of energy efciency assessment in buildings in China.

Table A1 Order Categories 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 CT1. Space heating and cooling load Indicators A1. Heat insulation of envelope A2. Airtightness of envelope A3. Orientation of building A4. Outdoor and indoor shadow A5. Nature ventilation B1. Efciency of boiler/chillers units B2. Efciency of air treatment units B3. Indoor air distribution B4. Efciency of water pumps B5. Efciency of lifts B6. Efciency of lighting facilities C1. Use of low embodied energy material C2. Reuse of material C3. Advanced design and construction technique C4. Use of local material D1. Adjustment of building facilities D2. Heat/cool consumption measure by occupant in central heating/cooling system D3. Energy cost for operation of building D4. Reclaim periods of building energy efcient investment D5.Training and spread of building energy conservation knowledge E1. Proportion of renewable energy in building energy consumption E2. Use of local renewable energy sources E3. Cost of the renewable energy F1. Indoor thermal comfort F2. Indoor lighting

CT2. Efciency of building facilities

CT3. Use and reuse of construction material

CT4. Operation and management

Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the nancial support from the Ministry of Housing and UrbanRural Development of the Peoples Republic of China (MOHURD) to support the project Assessing energy efciency in buildings and the development of an energy-efcient building labelling system in China (Contract no. 2006BAJ0113-2). The authors would like to thank the Chinese Scholarship Council for the Plan of excellent talents in China-UK (2006) overseas scholarship to sponsor Yulan Yang carrying out research at the University of Reading during the period 20072008. The authors would like to thank all the experts for their invaluable contribution to this survey.

20 21 22 23 24 25 CT5. Use of renewable energy

CT6. Indoor comfort and health

Table A2 Equal importance 1 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Absolutely important 9.

Appendix 1. A draft indicator list of energy efciency assessment in residential building See Table A1 for more details.

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Appendix 2. An example of the questionnaire of weighting indicators

Question 1. In order to assess the energy efciency in residential building in the hot summer and cold winter zone in China, which is more important between A and B? What is the importance degree of one indicator over the other? (Please mark your selection with O) (To answer the question, rstly, you need to tick the indicator that is more important than other in relation to the overall energy efciency assessment, then please tick the number to describe the importance degree of one indicator over the other, number of 1 indicates that both indicators are equal important to the overall assessment (in the case, you do not have to tick the indicator that is more important than other), number of 9 indicates that one is absolutely important than the other, the bigger the number is, the more relative importance degree.) A. Thermal insulation of envelope _B. Airtightness of envelope _. The degree of importance can be described as in Table A2.

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