No. 294: Environment-conscious medium-sized office buildings (July 26, 2011)

As the trend to utilize natural energy is growing, Daiwa House will propose environment-conscious medium-sized office buildings that utilize natural energy including sunlight. They can save electricity 30% more than the existing office buildings and halve carbon dioxide emissions. The newly-developed technology is called �D�s Smart Office,� and the company simulates the environment performance and estimates how much power consumption is curbed starting in the design stage. Solar panels will be inserted in the newly-developed external wall frames instead of being put on the roof, and they have a generation capacity of about 10 kW per hour at the maximum. The D�s Smart Office comes with highly-insulated outer wall materials and windowpanes as standards. LEDs will be used for lighting and the Building and Energy Management System (BEMS) that controls air-conditioning and lighting automatically for energy conservation as options. The company plans to propose this new concept to medium-sized building with a floor space of less than 1,000 square meters. It has already built a branch office using this technology, and all other offices will be replaced by the newly-developed environment-conscious building.