China is facing severe problems in fossil fuel consumption and pollutant emission largely owing to the construction of buildings. Office buildings, as a major building type in China, contribute around 22% of the national fossil fuel energy use and 14% of carbon emissions. The identification of the most appropriate solution to energy saving and pollutant emissions reducing at the earlier design stage of office buildings is significantly important to China’s sustainability development and environmental protection.This PhD research aims to establish a simple and straight-forward assessment method that can predict fossil fuel energy use and the associated pollutant emissions of the Chinese office buildings at their early conceptual design stage (when the detailed material and constructional information is unavailable), and further, develop a computer- aided assessment and selection process that can identify the best design solution to the office buildings of China. This work is carried out through a standard research process including literature review, methodology development, computer model establishment, case study and results analysis with comparisons, followed by recommendations. As a result, the research provides a variety of important outputs, i.e., the life-cycle energy and air-pollutants estimation method, the generalized environmental impact metric system, and the green office building design solution assessment and selection system (GBAS). It has been demonstrated that the simplified energy and pollutants estimation method can predict the energy consumption and associated pollutant emissions at each office building life-cycle phase, based on the refined mathematical correlations and associated computerized toolkits. By using the generalized environmental impact metric system, the pollutant equivalent (PE), which reflects the combined environmental impact of the emission of four common pollutants, is derived and its values are discussed in detail. Based on the estimation of life-cycle energy and PE, the GBAS system is developed to identify the “best” design solution on both the quantitative survey and qualitative analyses.A combination of all the above outcomes leads to the development of a comprehensive computerized tool that can conduct faster assessment, optimization and selection of the “best” design solutions for Chinese office buildings at their very earlier stage of design. The prediction results have been proven to be rational, realistic and applicable to practical engineering projects.The outcomes of the research can help in the design of energy efficient and “green” office buildings in China, thus contributing to China’s sustainable development and environmental protection
