Green building

A lot of work is being done on setting new energy consumption standards for new build housing – such as the 2016 ‘zero carbon’ target for the UK – but relatively little is being done about the existing stock. Because new build adds much less than 1% to the housing stock each year, the majority of the stock will have been built to much lower construction standards. About 40% of the UK housing stock was built before 1945. Although there are many UK Government funded programmes designed to help householders reduce energy consumption, access to these schemes is confusing, bureaucratic and limited, funding is subject to political whim and public awareness is low.

The University of Nottingham and E.ON are beginning a project to develop cost effective measures to reduce the carbon footprint of a typical 1930s semi-detached house to that of the target 2016 house.

The project web page – still lacking detail – is at www.nottingham.ac.uk/sbe/creative_energy_homes/eon_uk_home/index.html

Not all ways of being passive are bad. One of them, however, is. Belgium and the United Kingdom will now have to defend their passivity in implementing the buildings directivein court. So, the commissioner seems to act according to the old rule for successful governance. He carries a smile (in his new blog) and a big stick (to make sure that perpetrators understand that the commission means business.)

The passivity mode that is easier to defend is that of building passive houses.EuroAce has made a survey of the EU-situation as regards strategies for passive houses (or rather low energy buildings) across the members and found quite a variety in guidelines and attitudes.Many of the activities are driven by NGOs, but it is obvious that there is a substantial interest

There are two web-sites were it is possible to follow the implementation processes for the directive.

http://www.buildingsplatform.eu/cms/index.php?id=7&no_cache=1 and http://www.epbd-ca.org/

The one called the buildings platform also has a newsletter in which there is also information that goes beyond the directive itself e.g. on passive buildings.

This discussion webinar takes place on Friday, March 21th, from 14h30 to 15h30.

Content

The UK is taking the lead in sustainable building. In 2007, new housing regulations were agreed upon and go into full force in stages over the upcoming years. The regulations stipulate that from 2016 on, all new homes in the UK will have to be zero-emission for heating, hot water, cooling, ventilation, and lighting. Also ECEEE has issued a statement for new buildings to be net zero energy consumers from 2015.

However, the concept of 'zero-energy' is loosely defined, and zero-energy buildings may be well beyond the cost-benefit balancing point. What about the embodied energy of materials used to reduce the last kWh's of energy consumption? Isn't the answer to these questions dependant on climate conditions? At what stage do other options for fighting climate change become more cost-effective than buildings?

UK sets example, will California be next?

The UK is taking the lead in sustainable building. In 2007, new housing regulations were agreed upon and go into full force in stages over the upcoming years. The regulations stipulate that from 2016 on, all new homes in the UK will have to be zero-emission for heating, hot water, cooling, ventilation, and lighting. This corresponds to Level 5 of the Code for Sustainable Homes.

The Code for Sustainable Homes is a new standard that gives new homes a 0 to 6 rating based on their performance against nine sustainability criteria. Level 0 is the base level and means the house meets current regulations. Level 1 includes a 10 per cent energy efficiency improvement over current regulations. Level 6 means a zero-carbon emission house for all energy use. The code was introduced as a voluntary standard in April 2007, and will become a mandatory label in April 2008.

By Roeland De Meulenaere & Bohdan Soroka

Buildings account for 40% of energy consumption in Europe, so their inherent efficiency is very important.

Efficient space heating requires a properly insulated and sealed building, together with a correctly sized heating system. The choice of system is also important; best practice includes gas-fired condensing boilers and ground-water heat pumps.

Having improved insulation and reduced air leakage, more attention has to be paid to controlled ventilation and air conditioning. In a well insulated and sealed building, ventilation represents a high proportion of the heat loss, so flow control, air distribution and heat recovery become very important.

Insulation and Heating -

Ventilation and Air-Conditioning -

The fifth weekly session at the Leonardo ENERGY 3D Forum takes place this Friday October 26, from 14h00 - 15h00 Europe Daylight Time, where you can meet with the Leonardo ENERGY team and other users of the Leonardo initiative inside the 3D forum.

During the session, you can power-chat (chat in parallel with multiple visitors), talk by VoIP, exchange business cards or browse the pavillons of the 3D world, which is updated weekly. The pavillions comprise virtual stands where you have access to information and 3D models of a number of appliances.

You are also invited to listen to past recorded presentations in the archive room.

For this Friday, following side presentations are scheduled during the session:

The social session will be followed by a webinar in the Energy Efficiency Pavillon by Stefan Fassbinder entitled Shouldn't die casting motor rotors also be possible with copper?. It should start around 15h00, European Daylight Time.

If you have not already done so, download & install the 3D World and register for the 3D Forum.

We hope to see you there regularly as our virtual guest in our weekly sessions every Friday, but you are invited to visit and investigate the Leonardo ENERGY 3D Forum at any time.

 

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What is Building America?

Building America is a private/public partnership sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy that conducts research to find energy-efficient solutions for new and existing housing that can be implemented on a production basis.

What Does Building America Do?

Building America conducts systems engineering research to do the following:

• Produce homes on a community scale that use on average 30% to 90% less energy
• Integrate onsite power systems leading to "zero-energy" (ZEH) homes that will ultimately produce as much energy as they use by 2020
• Help home builders reduce construction time and waste
• Improve builder productivity
• Provide new product opportunities to manufacturers and suppliers
• Implement innovative energy- and material-saving technologies.

As the sixth report in its 'Building America Best Practice Series', the US Department of Energy published a guide on using solar thermal and photovoltaic systems (attention: large pdf file!) in combination with good insulation as a best practice for zero-energy homes.

The term 'zero-energy home' is used loosely in the report to mean houses with at least 50% reduced utility bills compared to standard practice.

The combination of energy efficiency with solar is cost effective compared to conventional homes as the reduction in energy bills is larger than the increased mortgage payments from the additional investment. This is a bit misleading though, since insulation will produce the largest part of the cost savings, whereas solar consumes most of the additional investment. Still, it may make sense to a home owner to use part of the cost savings from good insulation to help finance solar technologies.

... 457 kg

The result of the Ice Challenge was revealed last week. On April 18, 2 blocks of ice had been placed in a red (normal isolated) and green (super-isolated) envelope. While the ice-block in the red envelope melted after 11 days, still 457 kg of ice remained when the green envelope was removed May 31.

 

This webcast describes a number of considerations about our energy system, when passive houses become the construction technology of choice in the future. Reducing the energy consumption of houses fits very well with the first and most important step of the Trias Energetica strategy towards a sustainable energy system. However, this strategy will seriously influence the design of energy grids in the residential area. It will have both a technical and economical impact that can not be neglected. The energy standards for passive houses are at such a level, that it is not economically viable anymore to invest in more than one energy infrastructure in a residential area. Although technically this could be a natural gas or hydrogen infrastructure, the choice for an all-electric infrastructure is more obvious. The traditional passive electricity distribution grid will gradually change into an active network with prosumers (both producers and consumers) of electricity instead of just consumers. Local balancing of electricity consumption and production, electricity storage and demand side management will become more and more important.

View webcast (14 minutes)

 

The energy package announced that a strategic energy technology plan, STP, should be made in the year 2007. Some of the preliminaries look even fuzzier than the quick sketching that was made in the package. There is however a chance for you to help put things on track. A public consultation is open on the web till May 13.

By Pascal Lenormand and Anne Rialhe, AERE

According to this new briefing paper, by AERE, Green Buildings need not be expensive. Thirty three case studies in the USA shows that green construction may add a few percents to the cost of constructing a new building. When considering that 86% of the lifetime operating cost of a building is in the salaries of its occupants, these additional costs are earned back quickly, and several times over.

Buildings also offer significant scope for reducing energy consumption and contributing to climate change mitigation. In this paper, the authors ask to what extent regulation is justified, and how to address the education challenge for the construction industry and end-users.

This paper will be presented and discussed in a webinar next month.

The European Sustainable Energy week will be "celebrated" througout Europe January 29-February 2. Several of the events may be of interest to readers of these pages, so check them out!

One that may especially valuable for the building industry is the one on Sustainable Construction - A good business. If you want to participate, remember to register ASAP. The events are free of charge but access to the EU-facilities requires early registration for security reasons.

What is PEP?

PEP, which stands for ‘Promotion of European Passive Houses’ is a consortium of European partners, supported by the European Commission, Dictorate General for Energy and Transport.

Why Promotion of European Passive Houses?

It is generally recognized that, within the housing sector in Europe, many building activities can be expected over the coming decades. The old building stock will need to be refurbished or, in many cases, even demolished and new buildings erected. The existing housing stock is responsible for a large share of our total energy consumption, and therefore many energy savings can be accomplished in these upcoming reconstruction activities. As previous demonstration projects (such as CEPHEUS) have demonstrated, the reduction of non-renewable energy demand by a factor 4 (compared to contemporary national standards) is not only possible but also realistic. The Passive House concept is a sound and relatively low-cost method to achieve these energy savings. To spread this knowledge throughout the professional building community, beyond the select group of specialists, PEP has set out to spread the experience gained throughout Europe on the Passive House concept.

An ecological and economical answer for modern living

Electric heating has always been unbeatable for safety and comfort. But it is expensive, according to conventional wisdom. Today, that image seems more and more undeserved. Both technology and our way of living have changed significantly. In an increasingly urbanized environment, with better insulated dwellings, electricity could very well turn out to be one of the most efficient ways of heating. Food for thought.

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In partnership with the PHP, a new stream of 'Frequently Asked Questions' on has been added to Leonardo ENERGY. We hope it meets your expectations and welcome your comments and ratings.

To check out our other FAQ streams, click here.

By Hans De Keulenaer & Rob van Gerwen

Reducing the energy consumption of houses fits very well with the first and most important step of the Trias Energetica strategy towards a sustainable energy system. However, this strategy will seriously influence the design of energy grids in the residential area. It will have both a technical and economical impact that can not be neglected. The energy standards for passive houses are at such a level, that it is not economically viable anymore to invest in more than one energy infrastructure in a residential area. Although technically this could be a natural gas or hydrogen infrastructure, the choice for an all-electric infrastructure is more obvious. The traditional passive electricity distribution grid will gradually change into an active network with prosumers (both producers and consumers) of electricity instead of just consumers. Local balancing of electricity consumption and production, electricity storage and demand side management will become more and more important.

Download paper

Future-proof homes

The insurance company Zurich has commissioned a study from Arup Associates to find out how buildings can be less vulnerable and cause less "disturbance" to the environment in the future. The time-horizon they are looking at goes to 2080 and the solutions are very interesting. What about buildings on stilts in areas where flooding occurs more frequently?

But there are also interesting implications for commonplace housing:

• Modularity to accommodate our changing needs in life
• End of commuting and return to local communities
• Self heating and self cooling by adaptation of material and appliances
• Energy self sufficiency (as a consequence)
• Plug-in cars to make better use of the grids
• Roof gardens to make better use of rain water
• Water independent by re-use

It sounds rather thrilling but the concept may include the end of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) because we can not handle the high-tech pieces! Very much what has already happened to our cars. The days when we could dive under the hood and fix our own motor-repair are since long gone.

There are more aspects and details available to check on sketches.

The Home Energy Saver is designed to help consumers identify the best ways to save energy in their homes, and find the resources to make the savings happen. The Home Energy Saver was the first Internet-based tool for calculating energy use in residential buildings. The Home Energy Saver was the first Internet-based tool for calculating energy use in residential buildings. The project is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), as part of the national ENERGY STAR Program for improving energy efficiency in homes, with previous support from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the US Department of Housing and Urban Development's PATH projgram, and the California Energy Commission's Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) program.

About 750,000 people visit the HES site each year. Over 90% are homeowners and renters, but many third parties use the site as well.