Evaluation and mitigation of greenhouse gas emission from President's Office Buildings, Prince of Songkla University, Hatyai, Thailand

Abstract

The importance of carbon footprint for organization is to investigate the components and activities which are outstanding engagements involving high Greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. Evaluation of the organizational GHG emissions from operational activities of administrative buildings of Prince of Songkla University (PSU), Hatyai campus was conducted in this study. The President's Office (PO) has a 6,988 m2 functional area including executive, administrative, and meeting operations. The organizational scope was focused in terms of operational control. The amount of GHG emissions of about 548 ton CO2 eq./yr was average released from PO operations during 2015 and 2016 (542 and 553 ton CO2 eq, respectively). The highest GHG emissions was indirect emission (scope 2) which resulted from electricity consumption in PO buildings, emitting 334 and 358 ton CO2 eq. in 2015 and 2016 respectively. More than half of whole electricity consumption arised from Air-conditioning (AC) system. Approximately 75% of the energy used in the building is attributed to administrative operations. Some effective solutions in reducing energy consumption of administrative building were suggested. The energy measures were divided into two different categories, reaching by internal and external factors. The scenarios were estimated for energy saving and GHG mitigation. Energy saving 11% was calculated by reduction AC work load to 5 hrs. Moreover, the most effective scenarios were identified of about 20% electricity comsumption reduction by mutualized Light-emitting Diode (LED) lighting retrofit with reduction operating time to 7 hrs and reduced operating time of AC system (5 hrs) and IT device (7 hrs). Furthermore, the energy saving model was appropriately considered for allocated support fund from external source. Therefore, the energy efficiency improvement requires holistic measures for sustainable energy building. The convergent association also reasonably brought about global warming mitigation.