Factors affecting energy consumption of commercial buildings in Sri Lanka

Abstract

With the expansion and development of Sri Lanka's economic practices and the modernization, client expectations for commercial building facilities have tremendously enhanced. Therefore, commercial building management has more focused on providing more effective and efficient buildings facilities to satisfy varied client requirements. Hence, commercial buildings need to consume a huge amount of energy to provide these facilities. However high energy consumption has caused to increase the energy cost, which takes a large proportion of the operation cost of commercial buildings. Ultimately all these causes adversely impact on the profit and the overall financial performance of the commercial buildings. Therefore, identification of main affecting ices which utilize energy mostly and factors effecting for the energy consumption by different building services is highly required for commercial buildings to gain economic advantage and to be sustainable firms. Through conducting a comprehensive literature review, the energy consumption of commercial buildings, energy management, including benefits of using energy management have been reviewed. Subsequently, a qualitative research choice was used to achieve the research aim. Semi-structured interviews were accompanied with 20 participants who are working in commercial buildings who are working in building management department and financial department respondents. Collected data were analyzed using manual content analysis technique. The empirical findings revealed the challenges of high energy consumption and reasons for growing energy consumption in commercial buildings. Further, widely used energy sources in commercial buildings were and finally, factors effecting on the energy consumption of commercial buildings in Sri Lanka were identified