Shaping the Energy Efficiency in New Buildings - Building Energy ...

according to the current codes. This initiative also includes a goal to monitor and increasethe compliance level at the state level to 90%.2.8 SummarySome of the important highlights in the development of building energy codes in APPcountries include the following:a) Australia has updated its building energy codes annually since 2003.b) Building energy codes in Canada and India were highly influenced by thestructure and development process of the United States ASHRAE 90.1 standard.c) Australia, Canada, China, Japan and the United States have both commercial andresidential building energy codes, while India has a building energy code for largebuildings. China’s residential and commercial codes also cover only largebuildings. South Korea’s building codes cover both commercial and residentialbuildings in the same document. 27d) The United States was the first APP country to develop both residential andcommercial building codes in 1975.3 Comparison of the Structure and Requirements ofBuilding Energy Codes3.1 Structural ComparisonThe topics that codes cover vary across countries. Within the APP region, the Englishspeakingcountries have codes that cover fairly similar issues, while the East Asiancountries each have unique codes covering different sets of issues. The United States,Canada and India all have building energy codes developed from or based on ASHRAEstandards. The Australian building energy code, while not directly patterned afterASHRAE, does approach building energy requirements in a fairly similar manner. Thebuilding energy codes in Australia, Canada, India and the United States all address suchbuilding components as building envelope, HVAC, lighting, service hot water, electricalpower and the building performance approach. Commercial building energy codes oftenprovide more detailed and stringent provisions than residential building energy codes thattarget single-family homes (except for India, which has only one code for large buildings).The codes in East Asia are less homogenous compared to those described above. China’sbuilding energy codes are focused on the building envelope and HVAC; lighting iscovered in a separate document. In Japan, the residential and commercial energy codeshave very different structures and compliance paths. Both China and Japan have detailedresidential building energy codes but in China the code covers only large residential27 BDCES focuses on large-scale buildings, but South Korea’s RBFCO applies to all buildings regardlessof their size. It is mandatory and provides requirements for minimum U-values, air tightness of buildingand other issues for all commercial and residential buildings.30