Digitalisation retrofitting and retro-commissioning towards carbon neutrality

Abstract

Abstract The Hong Kong Green Building Council (HKGBC) is committed to helping Hong Kong’s buildings to decarbonise and advance towards net zero emissions. In support of the Government’s recent announcement of striving to achieve carbon neutrality before 2050, most of the commercial building owners are setting a long term reduction target. There are over 42,000 private buildings with about one-fifth of them are commercial that covering 66% of total energy consumption of Hong Kong, in which over 80% of them will be in existence in 2050. There is opportunity to reduce the operational carbon of existing buildings through replacement, retrofitting and retro-commissioning of existing building services installation. To understand whether the target is achievable in existing buildings, an energy performance assessment is required to be conducted by using operating data and corresponding key performance indicators (KPIs). The process of retro-commissioning, retrofitting and replacement should be digitalised by means of sensors, actuators and data management platform for assessing the change in performance before and after such improvement measures taken place in existing buildings.