Development of green buildings energy efficiency strategies based on structural equation modelling for the sustainability of Universiti Tenaga Nasional at Putrajaya campus

• Main Author: Abubaker Salem Saleh Ba-batin
• Format: text::Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2023

The study examined the critical factors affecting the sustainability of UNITEN buildings and developed different strategies to identify appropriate operational and technical aspects to improve the energy efficiency of buildings at UNITEN. Two methods were used to obtain energy usage data from the selected UNITEN buildings. In the first method, the data were collected based on a non-structured interviews with the employees of the UNITEN Facility of Development & Management (FDM). This was important to validate the questionnaires in the second phase of the data collection. Secondly, the survey method was utilized in the form of questionnaires to collect the representative data on the perceptions of the respondents on the green strategies of building energy efficiency. The survey work was carried out on a population of UNITEN staffs with different academic qualifications and ages, including lecturers, technical staffs, and non-technical staffs. The survey questionnaires were distributed to the selected UNITEN employees, with 208 employees responded to the survey and their responses were gathered and analyzed using the structural equation modelling. Structural equation modelling, an analysis based on the validation survey, was used to examine the dependencies and interdependencies of critical factors of the affecting the building energy usage. IBM SPSS AMOS 22 was used based on a maximum likelihood estimate for exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, which in turn yielded validated structure and measurement models. From the results, it was found that the major factors that influenced the annual building energy consumption are chiller optimization, space utilization, energy-saving awareness, and building temperature adjustment. Other factors included the lighting system usage by replacing fluorescent lights with LED lights and the implementation of dimming system and occupancy sensors. With all the four levels of model fitness were confirmed to be acceptable, it is significant from the study that the findings from the structural equation model were valid for charting the green strategies of the building energy consumption.