A review of existing building benchmarks and the development of a set of reference office buildings for England and Wales

The modern built environment has become more complex in terms of building types, environmental systems and use profiles. This complexity causes difficulties in terms of optimizing buildings energy design. In this circumstance, introducing a set of prototypical reference buildings, or so-called benchmark buildings, that are able to represent all or majority parts of the UK building stock may be useful for examination of the effect of national energy policies on building energy consumption. This study proposes a set of reference office buildings for England and Wales based on the information collected from the Non-Domestic Building Stock project and an intensive review of the existing building benchmarks. The proposed building benchmark comprises of 10 prototypical reference buildings, which in relation to built form and size, represent 95% of office buildings in England and Wales. This building benchmark provides a platform for those involved in building energy simulations to evaluate energy-efficiency measures and for policymakers to assess the influence of different building energy policies.