Sustainable Building Technology: Systems, Resilience, and Emerging Practices

This course explores sustainable building performance beyond basic energy efficiency, covering high-performance envelopes, daylighting, HVAC, electrification, water efficiency, automation, metering, commissioning, renewable energy, storage, and life-cycle decision-making. Designers examine how codes, standards, and benchmarking tools shape design and operations, with an emphasis on near-zero carbon, people, and resilience. The course focuses on integrated design, trade-offs, and performance verification, linking decisions to energy use, emissions, resilience, occupant well-being, costs, and long-term value.

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

• Explain sustainable building design principles in relation to decarbonization, resilience, occupant health, resource conservation, and long-term building performance
• Interpret the role of current model codes, standards, rating systems, and benchmarking tools in sustainable building design and operations, including ASHRAE® standards, the International Energy Conservation Code®, LEED® v5, and ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager®
• Describe how building envelope assemblies affect energy use, occupant comfort, durability, and HVAC loads, including the impacts of insulation, airtightness, glazing, thermal bridging, vapor control, and moisture management
• Apply daylighting, LED lighting, and advanced lighting-control fundamentals to improve energy performance, visual comfort, and operational flexibility
• Analyze HVAC system design, zoning, ventilation, filtration, indoor air quality monitoring, dedicated outdoor air systems, and energy recovery strategies as part of a whole-building performance approach
• Compare electrification strategies, heat pump technologies, central plant systems, refrigerant considerations, and low-carbon HVAC approaches for different building applications
• Describe water distribution, conservation, smart monitoring, leak detection, reuse strategies, and public-health considerations that support sustainable water performance
• Evaluate how building automation, smart analytics, fault detection, trend data, and optimized control sequences support efficient and reliable building operations
• Apply metering, measurement, and verification, commissioning, retro commissioning, and ongoing performance optimization practices to support building performance goals
• Evaluate how renewable energy, battery storage, demand response, and life-cycle cost decision-making contribute to resilient, low-carbon building operations