New College Building Enables 60% Cut in CO2 Emissions

The Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan announced on April 27, 2012, the completion of the Environmental Energy Innovation Building named Green Hills Building 1 in the Ookayama Campus in Meguro Ward, Tokyo. The new building has energy systems that reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 60 percent or more, and provide sufficient electricity to cover most of the building's own consumption. The building will be used from 2012 summer for the research of cutting edge environmental energy technologies.

With seven stories above ground and two below, the building has a total floor area of 9,554 square meters. A total of 4,570 solar generation panels installed on southern and western walls and rooftop walls of the building have a generation capacity of 650 kilowatts. Also adopted is a highly efficient hybrid distributed power generation system that uses phosphoric acid fuel cells with a generation capacity of 100 kilowatts.

High-temperature heat exhausted from fuel cells is recovered and used for air conditioning via an absorption-type refrigerator, while low-temperature heat is used for desiccant air conditioning, to maximize the total efficiency of the system. Devices adopted for energy conservation include ground heat pumps for exhausted heat from air conditioners, light emitting diode bulbs for common use spaces, double glass for windows and human body detectors. The building is shock-proof to withstand inland earthquakes thanks to the "basket-frame" of earthquake energy dissipation braces around the building.

Posted: 2012/07/16 06:00:15 AM