Investigation of Barriers and Improvement Methods for Net Zero Energy Buildings: Stakeholders' Viewpoints

Construction and buildings used 37% of the total energy, the world's largest gross energy consumption. So, net zero energy building (NZEBs) to mitigate carbon dioxide (CO2) has become a hot trend worldwide. The NZEBs concept can be defined as the balance between generation and load or imported and exported energy. The target population for this research was the stakeholders in implementing NZEBs. Stakeholders are individuals or groups interested in and influencing an organization. Cochran's Sample Size Formula was used to determine the sampling number, and a quantitative approach was used to collect data in this research. A total of 105 respondents answered the questionnaire. The questionnaire consists of three main sections—The first section questions about the respondents' demographic. The entire data of respondent background includes gender, age, highest academic qualification, stakeholder position, and years of experience in NZEBs construction. The second section investigated the barriers to implementing NZEBs in Malaysia from the Stakeholders' viewpoint. The highest mean of the barriers to implementing NZEBs was "Requires high initial costs for installation NZEBS technologies" within 105 respondents. The third section investigates the improvement ways of implementing NZEBs in Malaysia from the Stakeholders' viewpoint. The highest mean was item 7, "Education enhancement at university and training institution level", with 4.28. In conclusion, the NZEB concept can aid in decreasing energy use through energy efficiency. However, the findings of this research demonstrated that there are barriers to the development of NZEBs in Malaysia and have also pointed out some of the improvement ways to solve the barriers.