Consideration of energy consumption, energy costs, and space occupancy in Finnish daycare centres and school buildings

The building sector contributes up to 30% of global annual greenhouse gas emissions and consumes up to 40% of all energy. Failure to encourage energy-efficiency and low-carbon in new builds or retrofitting will lock countries into the disadvantages of poor performing buildings for decades. The journey towards low-carbon and energy efficient buildings starts with good design, commissioning and measuring. The share of energy costs can be up to 50% of all maintenance costs [7] in Finland. In the studied buildings the average costs were 39% for daycare centres and 45% for schools. Since the share of energy costs is remarkable in maintenance, it is important to find out the most concrete indicators to measure energy efficiency in practice. This study explores ways in which building usage and occupancy influences the energy cost in Finnish daycare centres and school buildings. This study shows that energy costs vary a lot between different energy efficiency indicators, i.e. there is great variation in energy costs regardless of the building age and when child or student density varies. Results indicated that actual use of space is profiled in the operational phase where the energy costs variation is remarkable.