The Effect of Different Climates on Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Heating Energy Consumption for Academic Buildings Using Optimal Scheduling

This paper is to quantify the effects of optimal university curricula on reducing heating energy consumption in various climates. Changing the courses’ time slots could decrease energy use. All educational limitations, availability of professors, number of classes, and each departments’ rules are considered. Universities are often located in the cities, and most Iranian city buildings consume natural gas for heating. Therefore, natural gas reduction means a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions in urban space. The optimal curricula could lower the thermal demand. The common method to adjust the curricula is to start a semester earlier or changed the setpoint temperature. The model optimized the planning for 2700 locations in Iran with different climates. The results showed that the optimal scheduling led to one percent to 25 percent heating energy reduction. The average saving among the studied points is nearly four percent. Among them, the amount of reduction is bigger for desert climates.