Climatic Control and Energy Conservation through Landscape Design

Abstract

Buildings consume significant large amount of energy for cooling, heating, ventilation and lighting in buildings to create desirable thermal comfort conditions. Increasing consumption of energy has led to environmental pollution resulting in global warming and ozone layer depletion and subsequently having climate change. Hence to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, caused by fossil fuels to power the operational energy requirement of the buildings has stimulated the interest towards adoption of climatic control and energy conservation measure through landscape design. In warm and tropical climates excess solar gain results in high cooling energy consumption. The use of landscape materials to moderate effects of adverse climates is not a new concept, but is receiving considerable attention in view of current emphasis on energy conservation.