Energy Efficient Buildings. Assessing The Impact of Lifts

As the impact of climate change becomes ever more visible, society appears at last to be reacting and making changes aimed at mitigating its impact and protecting our established ways of life. Most if not all human activity affects our planet, and the creation, operation, modernization, and replacement of buildings is no exception. The lift industry therefore has an important part to play in minimizing its impact on our climate; the creation of new lift equipment consumes energy which is quantified by its embodied carbon credentials, whilst the use of lifts consumes energy characterised by its operational carbon credentials. These carbon credentials play a key part in the assessment of a building’s energy performance and as an industry we now need to recognize this and refine both the processes and the accuracy with which we model the impact. This paper explores some of the current guidance and assessment methodologies touching on such established documents as the British Standard BS EN ISO 25745 [1]. Application of these methodologies will be reviewed against a real-world case study, and conclusions and recommendations presented on how the industry might refine future assessments towards more realistic results.