energies Article Energy Performance and Benchmarking for University Classrooms in Hot and Humid Climates Jaqueline Litardo 1, * , Ruben Hidalgo-Leon 2 and Guillermo Soriano 2   Citation: Litardo, J.; Hidalgo-Leon, R.; Soriano, G. Energy Performance and Benchmarking for University Classrooms in Hot and Humid Climates. Energies 2021, 14, 7013. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14217013 Academic Editor: Paulo Santos Received: 28 September 2021 Accepted: 19 October 2021 Published: 26 October 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Department of Architecture, Built, Environment and Construction Engineering (DABC), Politecnico di Milano, Via Ponzio 31, 20133 Milan, Italy 2 Centro de Energías Renovables y Alternativas CERA, Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral ESPOL, Km. 30.5 Vía Perimetral, Guayaquil 090902, Ecuador; rhidalgo@espol.edu.ec (R.H-L.); gsorian@espol.edu.ec (G.S.) * Correspondence: jaqueline.litardo@polimi.it Abstract: In this paper, the energy performance of a university campus in a tropical climate is assessed, and four mixed classroom buildings are compared using benchmarking methods based on simple normalization: the classic Energy Use Intensity (EUI), end-used based EUI, and people- based EUI. To estimate the energy consumption of the case studies, building energy simulations were carried out in EnergyPlus using custom inputs. The analysis found that buildings with more classroom spaces presented higher energy consumption for cooling and lighting than others. In comparison, buildings with a greater percentage of laboratories and offices exhibited higher energy consumption for plug loads. Nevertheless, differences were identified when using the people-based EUI since buildings with larger floor areas showed the highest values, highlighting the impact of occupant behavior on energy consumption. Given the fact that little is known about a benchmark range for university campuses and academic buildings in hot and humid climates, this paper also provides a comparison against the EUIs reported in the literature for both cases. In this sense, the identified range for campuses was 49–367 kWh/m 2 /year, while for academic buildings, the range was 47–628 kWh/m 2 /year. Overall, the findings of this study could contribute to identifying better-targeted energy efficiency strategies for the studied buildings in the future by assessing their performance under different indicators and drawing a benchmark to compare similar buildings in hot and humid climates. Keywords: Energy Use Intensity; higher education buildings; energy consumption; benchmarking; hot and humid climates; EnergyPlus 1. Introduction The assessment of the energy performance of existing and new buildings is of paramount importance for minimizing the energy consumption of this sector. This is due to the fact that buildings and their related sectors consume about 35% of the global energy and are responsible for about 38% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions [1]. The latter makes this sector the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions [2]. The energy use in a building is directly influenced by its physical characteristics such as geometry, envelope, and systems [3]. Several studies have shown that about 70% of energy consumption in buildings comes from HVAC systems (around 50%) and artificial lighting (around 20%) [4–8]. In hot and humid cities, the use of air conditioners considerably increases the energy consumption of buildings, and this can also be exacerbated by the urban heat island effect [3,9]. Within the building sector, educational buildings worldwide have evidenced high energy consumption. For instance, university buildings in the USA account for about 13% of the total building energy consumption, with teaching buildings being key drivers of this due to their schedules and occupancy densities [10]. Similarly, in China, Liu and Ren reported that colleges and universities use 8% of the total energy consumed by Chinese Energies 2021, 14, 7013. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14217013 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/energies