Analysis of the Effects of Strengthening Building Energy Policy on Multifamily Residential Buildings in South Korea

The purposes of this study were to overview the building-energy policy and regulations in South Korea to achieve energy-efficient multifamily residential buildings and analyze the effects of strengthening the building design requirements on their energy performances. The building energy demand intensity showed a linear relationship with the area-weighted average U-values of the building envelope. However, improving the thermal properties of the building envelope was limited to reducing the building-energy demand intensity. In this study, the effects of various energy conservation measures (ECMs) on the building-energy performance were compared. Among the various ECMs, improving the boiler efficiency was found to be the most efficient measure for reducing the building-energy consumption in comparison to other ECMs, whereas the building envelope showed the least impact, because the current U-values are low. However, in terms of the primary energy consumption, the most efficient ECM was the lighting power density because of the different energy sources used by various ECMs and the different conversion factors used to calculate the primary energy consumption based on the source type. This study showed a direction for updating the building-energy policy and regulations, as well as the potential of implementing ECMs, to improve the energy performances of Korean multifamily residential buildings.