How Daikin ventilation solutions can contribute to Green Building certification

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Climate change, pollution, environmental degradation, resource depletion, those are all effects of the environmental issue we often hear about. All effects that we, the human species, necessarily need to minimize to preserve the planet.

The environmental issue we are facing is primarily caused by human activity, starting from the way we build. The construction sector contributes to air pollution, climatic change, drinking water pollution, and landfill wastes. Buildings’ impact on the environment goes beyond construction material. The water, energy, and resources used every day in those buildings do affect the environment making the building sector a major contributor to global warming – it is responsible for approximately 40% of energy consumption and 36% of the CO2 emissions in the EU.

In this context, the concept of Green Building can help in reducing the impact the building sector has on the environment and all that goes with it.

More about green building

A Green Building is designed to minimize or even eliminate negative impact on the environment, creating positive impact on climate, natural resources, and quality of life overall.

This construction concept uses processes that are resource-efficient and environmentally responsible, through the entire life-cycle – from the design to construction, operation to maintenance, renovation to deconstruction, and everything is in between.

Of course, Green Buildings, to be considered as such, go through a quality assessment based on specific rating systems, which certify how the facilities are designed to minimize their impact on the environment.

The most popular building certification today are the BREEAM – largely used worldwide, with over 200,000 buildings certified and over a million registered for assessment – and the LEED certification, which is especially popular the US, but is rapidly spreading in the EU as well.

With Green Building construction, the building sector has a way to minimize the environmental impact, also generating economic advantages for building owners that can benefit from increased profitability in case of sale or rent, or operational costs reduction, which can help increasing profit when renting.

HVAC systems can determine buildings’ impact on the environment as they usually account for about 50% of the energy consumption.

That not only says how HVAC systems can minimize the environmental impact of a building, also explains how they can be valuable for green building certification by simply making a building more energy efficient and a heathier environment for occupants.

Daikin’s main goal is contributing to mitigating the impact that the Air Conditioning sector has on the environment by designing and producing technological solutions that can lead the way towards sustainability.

That is the case of the solutions provided by Daikin for the residential sector, and the same is for those provided for the industrial and commercial sector – both Chillers and Mechanical Ventilation solutions.

Daikin solutions

While how Daikin chiller solutions can contribute to Green Building is a topic that have already been addressed (read more here), Mechanical Ventilation solutions are also very relevant, then, a topic worth mentioning as well.

The whole Daikin Air Handling Units (AHUs) portfolio is designed to provide outstanding energy efficiency and superior indoor air quality, thanks to the use of premium components and thorough optimization, which allow Daikin technology to provide unrivalled performance, both in terms of energy use and creation of a healthy indoor environment.

Besides complying with all the prerequisites LEED and BREAM certifications might require and reducing Building Owners’ operative costs by saving on energy consumption, Daikin AHUs are designed to offer the possibility to be monitored operation-wise. That can be possible through the different control options available, which, along with the cloud monitoring platform DoS (Daikin on Site), or third party BMS, which allow to monitor operation, energy consumptions and take actions to constantly meet sustainability goals.

As far as indoor air quality (IAQ), air-exchange is fundamental to make sure that indoor air is always clean. That is be made possible through mechanical ventilation, which replaces indoor air with filtered fresh outdoor air. In the process of doing that, especially in winter, it is important that the mechanical ventilation system do not generate any heat loss (then energy consumption increase), which is avoided thanks to the heat recovery option extensively featured across the whole product portfolio.

Daikin AHUs are designed to meet and exceed the requirements in all local legislations and all HVAC projects, both in terms of air-exchange and air filtration, also showing great focus on hygienic aspects.

Daikin AHUs can be equipped with filtration systems ensuring the highest possible filtration level (HEPA 14) and can guarantee, with proper unit sizing, the right air-exchange rate in any situation.

To top that off, Daikin AHUs’ are able to communicate with the Daikin IEQ (Indoor Environmental Quality) Sensor, which allows monitoring of pollutants concentration and, when necessary, triggers AHUs intervention to recover or maintain the IAQ level desired.

All these aspects help constructors increase their chances of being able to certify their buildings as Green Building, as aspects such as emissions, energy and resources use, plus occupants’ well-being, are all addressed by Daikin solutions.

Indeed, that applies to refurbishments and building renovations too. In fact, Daikin can make the above-mentioned possibilities at reach also for buildings that were not designed to accommodate a ventilation system from the start.

That is the case of the Modular T Pro & Smart Series, the latest addition for de-centralized ventilation in Daikin AHUs product portfolio.

Read more here about the new Modular T Pro & Smart Series

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