The Influence of Lean Energy Retrofitting Initiatives on Malaysian School Building

Abstract

In Malaysia, there are at least 10, 000 government schools that are operating five days a week, for ten months every year. All these schools' energy usage and bills are under the responsibility of the Ministry of Education Malaysian Government. The majority of the schools were traditionally designed and are still being used even though the age of the buildings is more than 30 years. In essence, not much energy efficiency design and management were incorporated into the initial designed. The demand for energy use is expected to rise dramatically in the coming years due to many factors such as the increasing number of students' enrolment and the demand for comfortable indoor environment in response to global climate effects. Therefore, there are many ideas, concepts and technologies that have been introduced towards energy conservation in buildings. The Malaysia Energy Commission introduced Energy Efficiency (EE) Challenge for schools to participate and win prizes offered by the agency. It is one of the government's initiatives to reduce energy consumption in schools and mark a starting point for schools in Malaysia moving forward to becoming energy efficient school building. The design element with lean energy management is the sole focused on passive retrofit strategy. This paper highlights the data of five schools that have consistently joined the EE Challenge from 2016 to 2019. The method of data secured is from the submitted report of EE Challenge to Malaysia Energy Commissions. Most of the schools managed to reduce their energy usage after participating in the challenge. Remarkably, the passive design technique implemented can effectively reduce electricity bills in schools. This study contributes to the buildings stakeholder, building industry professionals and national or international organizations who preferred sustainable building practices. On top of that, the government will benefit in terms of reducing the cumulative amount of electric bills that need to be spent annually.