Low-Carbon Design Path of Building Integrated Photovoltaics: A Comparative Study Based on Green Building Rating Systems

Abstract

CO2 emissions of buildings have a critical impact on the global climate change, and various green building rating systems (GBRS) have suggested low-carbon requirements to regulate building emissions. Building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV), as an integrated technology of photovoltaics and buildings, is an important way to reduce building CO2 emissions. At present, the low-carbon design path of BIPV from architecture is still not unified and clear, and there is a lack of BIPV research regarding GBRS or from the perspective of architectural design in China. The objective of this study is to propose a framework of indicators related to carbon emission control in BIPV, guiding the path of BIPV low-carbon design. This study makes comparisons among the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM), and Assessment Standard for Green Buildings (ASGB), mainly in terms of the scope weight, induction, and measure features. The BIPV low-carbon design involves energy, materials, environmental adaptability, management, and innovation, in which energy and materials are the main scopes with weights of 10.98% and 7.46%, respectively. The five scopes included 17 measures. Following the measures, the path of the BIPV low-carbon design was defined with six aspects.