Energy, Environmental, and Economic Evaluation of a Novel Building Integrated Green System: Insights from Residents and Social Perspectives

Document Type : Research Article-en

Authors

• M. M. Naserian
• R. Khodabakhshian

Department of Biosystems Engineering, Faculty of Agriculture, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran

https://doi.org/10.22067/jam.2024.89307.1274

Abstract

The buildings and the agri-food sectors nearly consume 40% and 21% of the world's total energy, respectively. This research aims to combine these two significant energy-consuming sectors to decrease the total society’s energy consumption. For this purpose, a novel small-scale building integrated agriculture system was designed and constructed. In this research, the total energy and water consumption, annual CO₂ production, and the total cost of employing the novel system were analyzed from the building residents’ and social points of view. Moreover, the results were compared with the total results of a building and a separate standard greenhouse with the same product. The results show that the total energy reduction because of using the novel system was 31.2%. According to the results, the novel system will cause approximately 3400 kgCO₂ emission reduction over a life cycle of 20 years. Moreover, yearly water consumption reduction was 19.2 L kg^-1 of lettuce production. The payback period was approximately 5 years based on the cost analysis results comprising investment, operational, and social costs. Sensitivity and Scenarios analyses were conducted to better understand the effect of probable influential parameters and make the investment for the novel system secure and attractive.

Keywords

• Energy modelling
• Environmental analysis
• Green Building
• NPV
• Vertical green system

Main Subjects

• Agricultural systems engineering (greenhouse, fish farming, mushroom production)

©2025 The author(s). This is an open access article distributed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0)

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