This past fall, a team of researchers from Harvard University’s Center for Public Health and the Global Environment, Syracuse University, and the State University of New York’s Upstate Medical University, with global building-systems developer United Technologies Corp., published the report “The Impact of Green Buildings on Cognitive Function,” in which they compared the cognitive-function test scores of subjects in both a conventional building environment and in one with enhanced ventilation. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they found that scores were significantly higher in the latter space.
Last week, the team released another report, this time honing in on office ventilation. Titled “Economic, Environmental and Health Implications of Enhanced Ventilation in Office Buildings,” the supplemental report explored three indoor environments—all based on a prototypical 53,000-square-foot, three-story structure with more than 260 occupants—with four different HVAC system setups across seven cities nationwide, including Boston, Boise, Idaho, San Francisco, and Albuquerque, N.M. Carrier’s Hourly Analysis Program was used to calculate the HVAC equipment’s annual energy consumption and its environmental impact was determined by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Power Profiler tool. The researchers aim to explore the potential benefits of enhanced ventilation to encourage building owners and project teams to pursue the related credits in green-building certification programs. Read more about both reports: The COGfx Study >>
