The quality of the indoor environment has become a vital component for buildings due to the time spent indoors. To this extent, the performance of the indoor environment is considered as part of the greenery criteria by green rating schemes such as the Green Building Index in Malaysia. This study aims to investigate and assess the quality of the indoor environment of Platinum-certified office buildings in a tropical climate. This research applied a case study approach over two Platinum-certified office buildings. Post-occupancy evaluation is employed integrating full-scale measurement with an occupants’ survey. The measurement was carried out from May to August, and 112 questionnaires were retrieved to evaluate occupants’ satisfaction with aspects of the indoor environment. Thermal comfort, indoor air quality, acoustic, lighting, furniture, and cleanliness are considered as the main study variables. The findings of full-scale measurement indicated high relative humidity, and low air velocity and illuminance. While occupants reported overall indoor environment quality (IEQ) comfort, a significant correlation of variables was observed. The main sources of dissatisfaction were identified as overcooling around 24 °C, high relative humidity (RH), around 70% RH, glare, and background noise around 51.9 dB. Statistically, a significant difference between occupants’ responses to IEQ of two cases was identified, although both buildings are labelled with a Platinum certificate.

Malaysia’s carbon emissions grew by +235.6% from 1990 to 2005, largely due to an increase in national energy demand of 210.7% from 1990 to 2004. This unparalleled carbon emission growth, along with business-as-usual (BAU) practices will put Malaysia at high risk for carbon lock-in and a very unsustainable path of development. Malaysia clearly needs to make significant and urgent changes in its policy, economy, industries and lifestyle in order to reduce its climate change impacts. In 2010 Malaysia announced a voluntary commitment to reduce 40% of its greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions by 2020 (from 1990 levels). Without emissions mitigation and conservation policies, Malaysia is unlikely to meet its emissions reduction targets. Presently, Malaysia has no energy efficiency legislation in its growing building sector. This paper reviews existing building policies and energy efficiency measures in Malaysia and highlights the need to implement mandatory energy efficiency building codes in reducing the sector’s impact on climate change.

Malaysia has rapidly transformed from an agricultural to an industrialized economy in the last four decades, which attributed to the accelerated 235.6% carbon emissions increase from 1990 to 2005. This carbon emission growth was largely due to an increase in national energy demand of 210.7% (1990 to 2004) and rising number of automobiles and industries. In 2009 Malaysia announced a voluntary commitment to reduce 40% of its greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions by 2020 (from 1990 levels). This commitment has not been greeted with much optimism given the limited support from existing legislation and restrained environmental awareness. Without emissions mitigation and conservation policies, Malaysia is unlikely to meet its emissions reduction targets. Malaysia has yet to include any energy efficiency legislation in its growing building sector, particularly in the Uniform Building By-Laws (UBBL). In the absence of such legislation, the Malaysian building sector is likely to lock-in inefficiency for decades into the future, which leads to further growth of GHG emissions. This paper reviews existing Malaysian policies and legislation in the building sector and recommends implementation of mandatory energy efficiency building codes to curb rising GHG emissions and reduce the carbon ‘lock-in’ risk.

Purpose: Global warming and climate change is one of the biggest issues facing humanity in this century; its effects are felt on the highest peaks of Mount Everest to the low-lying islands in the India Ocean. This century marked the highest amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emitted, breaking records of the past 650,000 years, and we have pushed the climate to “a point of no return”. Much of the climate contribution has been linked to humanity’s thirst for higher living standards and lifestyle, which has led to higher consumerism, depletion of earth’s resources, production of massive waste and carbon emissions. Fast forward from the sustainability agenda of Brundtland set in 1987 and the increasing demand for energy consumption to cater for the current global inhabitants, many “green” efforts have been taken by the building industry to reduce the overall environmental impact. This purpose of this study is to compare energy performance of a conventional office building with a green certified building. Design/methodology/approach: This paper tries to bridge the performance gap by comparing measured operational energy consumption and carbon emission of Green Building Index (GBI)-certified office buildings in Kuala Lumpur, to determine whether “green buildings” are performing as intended in reducing their environmental impact. Findings: This paper highlighted and compared operational energy consumption and carbon emissions of a GBI-certified office with a conventional office building in Malaysia. The paper also discusses the performance gap issue and its common causes, and aims to compare predicted energy and operational energy performance of buildings. Originality/value: Initiatives such as “green” or “sustainable” design have been at the forefront of architecture, while green assessment tools have been used to predict the energy performance of a building during its operational phase. There is still a significant performance gap between predicted or simulated energy measurements to actual operational energy consumption. The need to measure actual performance of these so-called “green buildings” is important to investigate if there is a performance gap and whether these buildings can perform better than conventional buildings. Understanding why the performance gap occurs is a step in reducing actual and predicted energy performance in buildings.

The relation between indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and occupants comfort has become a critical area of research through building life cycle. The importance of the relationship becomes highlighted when IEQ has a strong influence to change people behaviour through its nature specifically in places like an office building where the productivity of occupants remains at the top of everything. In this regard, this manuscript documented the parameters of the indoor environment quality which has a strong influence on occupants’ comfort. Through critical review of literature, it has been found that IEQ parameters as thermal, noise, light and air quality could strongly affect the human comfort and health while having a critical role in energy consumption in the building. Moreover, there is a complicated relation among IEQ parameters which make it difficult for a designer to find a balance among them regarding occupants’ comfort and productivity and this complication is more confusing in green construction. Many post occupancy evaluation (POE) studies in both conventional and green buildings have carried out, but almost none of them indicated a full satisfaction with IEQ parameters simultaneously. Therefore, this paper investigated among IEQ parameters and their correlation with each other pertaining to occupants’ satisfaction, health and productivity in office buildings with different methods of construction.