Building Energy Audit in Nigeria: Some Guides for Energy Efficiency Building Regulations

Abstract

Buildings account for a large proportion of total energy use in the world and that has surpassed all the other sector of the economy of most countries. There is a great need to gather better data on building energy performance and to be able to compare performance across locations and building typologies so that best practices can be more rapidly evolved. The question of how much energy the average Nigerian building consume is still an open ended one. This paper presents a synthesis of energy supplied and utilized in 105 buildings based on building energy audit, physical examination, onsite measurements and discussions with relevant stakeholders, conducted in three cities from different climatic belts of Nigeria. The aim was to draw a basic energy consumption profile of residential, commercial and institutional buildings. This survey found the preponderance of the use of energy inefficient products, inadequate utilization of daylighting, complete absence of building energy management systems, extremely low adoption of renewable energy systems and orienting building without due consideration to bioclimatic factors. This paper recommends policy changes that can be used to realise a large and feasible energy saving in new as well as existing buildings in Nigeria.