Operational Carbon Simulation Using Industry Foundation Classes at Early Design Stage

The simulation of operational carbon is the focus of the building design phase because it accounts for a significant part of building life cycle carbon emissions. However, operational carbon simulation based on industry foundation classes (IFC) is still challenging in the early design stage without building equipment information. Therefore, this paper takes IfcSpace as the calculation and storage unit for operational carbon. Furthermore, a building is used as a case study to verify this approach. The case results show that this building generates 90,818.7 tCO2eq carbon emissions over its 50 year operational period. The office room type contributes the most significant carbon emissions (41.8%), and the computing center has the highest carbon emission density at 443.28 kgCO2eq/(year m2). This study extends the property set of IfcSpace for operational carbon simulation without building service models, which helps optimize operational carbon at an early design stage.