انرژی ساختمان برای توسعه پایدار در مالزی: یک مقاله مروری Building energy for sustainable development in Malaysia: A review

Abstract Malaysia is located in Southeast Asia near the equator within the typical tropical climatic zone. The efficient use of energy is vital due to the dependency on fossil resources that are being exhausted, which ultimately cause CO2 emissions. Economic development and population growth are deemed to affect the growing energy demand in the country. Therefore, sustainability, energy security, and climate change are crucial challenges for the power sector in Malaysia. The aforementioned issues can be tackled with energy efficient measures in the building sector. Buildings in Malaysia consume 14.3% of the overall energy and 53% of only electrical energy is being consumed in residential and commercial sectors. Therefore, energy efficiency in buildings is crucial in order to reduce the energy use and improve the local environmental sustainability. This paper discusses a review on the building energy scenario, the policy perspectives, building energy efficiency programs along with landmark buildings and their characteristics. Besides, the potential of renewable energy resources in buildings and various prospective issues and challenges faced by the country have also been discussed. The significant review content thus benefits researchers, scientists and practitioners for a better understanding on energy efficiency and the sustainable measures that have been so far taken. The review also puts forward some actions to promote building energy efficiency and conservation. ۱٫ Introduction Energy is a lifeline and crucial element for the social, economic and sustainable development of various countries. Due to rapid infrastructure development and economic growth, this continues to affect the growing energy demand in Malaysia. This energy demand is influenced by population growth, per capita income, and demographic changes (such as increasing urbanization and economic growth). The increase in energy consumption recorded in 2012 was 7.5% and expected to rise in the range of 6–۸% in subsequent years [1]. However, challenges of sustainability, energy security, rapid exhaustion of indigenous fossil resources and climate change have made the country to take into account the building energy efficiency in its policy road map. Hence, efficient usage of energy is significant for preserving the available energy resources, and consequently alleviates the growing energy demand. Moreover, in 2009, Malaysia ranked 52 on the climate change performance index, an instrument that evaluates and compares 90% of the global CO2 emissions of 57 countries [2]. One of the potential sectors that appear to be tackling these aforementioned challenges is the building sector. Since buildings and the built environment contribute significantly to the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Malaysia is located in Southeast Asia near the equator with coordinates of 2° ۳۰′ N and 112° ۳۰′ E, and a total area of 329,750 sq. km. It is divided into two parts by the South China Sea; named as Peninsular Malaysia bordering the south of Thailand, and East Malaysia bordering northern Singapore and the Indonesian islands. Its climate is generally hot and humid (tropical) throughout the year with an average rainfall of 250 cm a year, and an average temperature of 27 °C [5]. These typical subtropical climatic conditions of Malaysia closely affect the indoor environmental comfort conditions in buildings. Malaysia’s overall energy demand for the year 2014 is shared by various sectors, such as Industry 25%, commercial & residential 14%, transport 47%, agriculture 2% and non-energy 12.0%, as depicted in Fig. 1. The electrical energy consumption in Industry is 45.9%, commercial 32.3%, residential 21.2%, transport 0.2% and agriculture 0.4% [1] in the year 2014 as shown in Fig. 2. This represents nearly 14.3% of the overall energy. Of which 53% of electrical energy is being consumed in residential and commercial sectors, which mainly comprise of buildings; this may include some non-buildings that are relatively small contributors, such as water and sewage treatments, street out-door lightings and losses. Moreover, industrial buildingrelated facilities have not been taken into account, which may surely increase the percentage of energy consumed in buildings. Thus, it is a leading contributor of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the country according to resources utilized to generate electrical energy. Since, only 80.9% of energy is being supplied through fossil resources, the rest is being supplied through renewables at 3.2% and hydro 15.9%. as shown in Fig. 3 [1]. The fuel mix has been comparatively diversified as compared to the year 2012 that is 92.4% fossil fuel, renewables 0.2% and hydro 7.4%. This scenario leads Malaysia towards sustainable and environment friendly future of buildings. Since, it has almost reduced its dependency on fossil fuel by 10%, besides almost doubled its hydroelectric and solar resources and added the use of biomass and biogas as renewable resources. The chronic electrical energy consumption in Malaysia’s residential and commercial sectors is shown in Fig. 4 [1], which shows a linear increase in consumption over the years. This also depicts the growing energy demands in contrast to the industrial sector which was surpassed in the year 2006, and has continued to increase yearly till date. Further, it will increase in the future due to climate changes and economic developments. Furthermore, building energy consumption in kilo watt hour (kWh) per capita for normalized population has been depicted in Fig. 5. The total electricity consumption in kWh per population has been obtained from the key energy statistics 2015 report from the international energy agency [3]. Whereas the percentage building energy consumption was reported elsewhere [4], therefore, the kWh per capita energy consumption in building has been computed. The developed countries such as Canada, Qatar, Singapore, and USA have been consuming highest per capita electricity consumption in buildings. Whereas, the developing industrialized countries are taking the lead in medium per capita consumption. In addition, Malaysia’s per capita electricity consumption falls in the industrialized state having 2434 kWh/capita consumption in buildings. The underdeveloped and developing countries have lowest per capita consumption in buildings as demonstrated in Fig. 5. Besides outdoor environment conditions, the behavior of energy in buildings is significantly influenced by various factors, such as construction material and location, appliances used inside the building, its specific use and type, occupancy pattern, user’s behavior. Moreover, 90% of people spend most of their time inside buildings, thus they are the central and most dynamic part of indoor building envelope. Due to the rising quality of life, the building’s energy consumption has increased dramatically over a few decades. Therefore, the landscape of energy in a building and its indoor environment seem to be the major challenge for the research community, government and society in the country. This paper aims to review the current scenario on building energy in Malaysia, and discusses the policies, programs, and landmark building and their characteristics. The paper has been organized systematically in order to conduct the literature review on building energy in Malaysia. This analyzes and identifies various aspects that are useful for the research community at large, practitioners, and stakeholders to get in-depth and systematic knowledge on the case of Malaysia’s building energy. The information on building energy is quite scattered in the literature; hence it is challenging for practitioners and policy makers to identify the key factors for the purpose of advancements in building energy projects in the world, specifically in Malaysia. Therefore, an attempt has been made to review, analyze and assess the building energy scenario, and identify the key factors to mobilize this sector in the world, and Malaysia for sustainable future of buildings energy demands.