Handbook of Energy Efficiency in Buildings

A Life Cycle Approach

Umberto Desideri, Francesco Asdrubali

• Publisher: Butterworth-Heinemann
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780128128176
• eBook ISBN: 9780128128183
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Civil Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Handbook of Energy Efficiency in Buildings: A Life Cycle Approach offers a comprehensive and in-depth coverage of the subject with a further focus on the Life Cycle. The editors, renowned academics, invited a diverse group of researchers to develop original chapters for the book and managed to well integrate all contributions in a consistent volume. Sections cover the role of the building sector on energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, international technical standards, laws and regulations, building energy efficiency and zero energy consumption buildings, the life cycle assessment of buildings, from construction to decommissioning, and other timely topics.The multidisciplinary approach to the subject makes it valuable for researchers and industry based Civil, Construction, and Architectural Engineers. Researchers in related fields as built environment, energy and sustainability at an urban scale will also benefit from the books integrated perspective.- Presents a complete and thorough coverage of energy efficiency in buildings- Provides an integrated approach to all the different elements that impact energy efficiency- Contains coverage of worldwide regulation

Chapter 1

Introduction

Francesco Asdrubali*; Umberto Desideri^{†    ⁎} Roma TRE University, Roma, Italy
^† University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

A few decades ago, books were written by one, two, or few authors, who were acknowledged experts in the field. Books were expected to provide a strong and durable assessment of knowledge and to be ready for consultation in libraries and home bookshelves. Writing a book in a world where technology is changing at a fast pace, competence is less concentrated in few individuals, and where information is replaced and updated almost daily is a real challenge. Buying a book is an investment and the content has to provide the necessary answers to the major questions that most experts would like to know with a good level of in-depth information and a large enough number of interdisciplinary topics. With this in mind, we decided that the most suitable format was to edit a book with contributions by highly reputed scholars, to collect the most significant points of view on each topic. But this is not enough if the book is not organized in order to include all major topics and issues of interest to the potential readers. At the same time, we wanted the chapters to have a complexity level that a reader with a degree in Engineering or Architecture could understand easily, not only earning a broad viewpoint on the topic but also being pushed to gain access to more specialized readings. Thus, the topics were organized in a way that could be easily grouped in terms of knowledge and expertise and all chapters are written as high level and comprehensive review papers.

The main subject of the book is based on the concern about energy and environmental issues, which has significantly grown worldwide in the last decades. Problems such as global warming, ozone layer depletion, and environmental pollution have gained the attention of researchers and policy makers.

Within this framework, the building sector plays a crucial role in the consumption of non renewable resources as well as in the release of emissions: in most industrialized countries buildings are responsible for up to 40% of total greenhouse gas emissions. This increase is due to two reasons: buildings using only renewable energy or producing it are still a negligible number and the reconstruction of the building stock takes much longer than restructuring industrial facilities and means of transportation. Moreover, a huge number of buildings have been built in the last three decades in developing countries with limited attention to energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The extensive adoption of energy-saving measures in the building sector is therefore important to contribute significantly to the reduction of global warming and of the use of fossil fuels.

In this context, it is important to distinguish new buildings from the existing ones. For instance, the European Union has issued various Directives to promote energy-efficient and sustainable buildings, in order to comply with the nearly Zero Energy Buildings (nZEB) standard, and legislators in other areas of the world have recently paid a lot of attention to the problem of sustainable buildings, introducing new standards and regulations to improve the energy and environmental quality of new buildings. If it is now possible to build energy and environmentally efficient new buildings, one of the most challenging issues is the renovation of existing buildings, which are usually characterized by a scarce performance.

Energy is not the only issue to improve the efficiency and environmental quality of buildings: materials and processes associated with the reduction of energy consumption may involve higher greenhouse gas emissions during the construction phase. For this reason the life cycle assessment (LCA) approach, which is the focus of this handbook, is extremely important in the design of energy-efficient buildings, since it is allows considering the entire life cycle of the building, avoiding shifting of energy and environmental burdens from one life stage to another.

The handbook is organized as follows.

• Section 2 deals with recommendations and standards for efficient buildings. The well-established European and North American legislations are compared with the ones of emerging Asian countries. In this field, the concept of energy efficiency has overcome the pure concept of insulating the building envelope and has produced new approaches in the design of new buildings and in the renovation of existing ones.
• Section 3 deals with the recent concepts of zero-energy and nearly zero-energy buildings, and also with the consolidated concepts of passive houses and bioclimatic architecture. Various sustainability rating systems, which have gained a significant diffusion at the international level, such as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) and Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM), are also presented, compared with national tools, and are critically discussed in this section. The readers will appreciate that the concept of sustainability in buildings includes several aspects that require a broad point of view either in the design or in the renovation of buildings and the necessity of integrating different competencies ranging from architecture to engineering of structures, plants and materials, to experts of the exterior and landscape design.
• Section 4 deals with LCA of building materials and components and of entire buildings. Standards, methodologies, tools, indicators and some case studies are presented in order to introduce the reader to the application and utilization of LCA procedures to the building sector.
• Section 5 deals with the various simulation tools which can be used for energy modeling of buildings. The main algorithms are presented and discussed and the main tools classified and described. Validation and calibration procedures are also presented.
• Section 6 deals with the different materials and technologies that can be used to optimize the energy performance of the building envelope. The first chapter deals with the definition of the various physical properties of building materials, including the laboratory methodologies for their measurement; the chapter is completed by useful tables with a review of properties. A second chapter within this section deals with innovative and advanced opaque insulating materials, characterized by a high energy and/or environmental performance, such as PCM (phase change material), VIP (vacuum insulating panels), aerogel, recycled, and natural insulating materials. The subsequent chapters are focused on innovative and advanced glazing materials, such as electrochromic, thermochromic, and selective coatings, on more complex and dynamic building components such as adaptive facades and finally on cool roofs, a simple but smart solution to control the energy demand of buildings during summertime.
• Section 7 is dedicated to building integrated plants. In order to reach the nZEB standard, buildings need to be characterized not only by highly efficient plants, but also by a significant integration of renewable energy systems. Buildings are expected to become energy conversion systems, aiming at using the energy that they produce. Solar systems, ground source heat pumps, cogeneration plants, and efficient heating and cooling plants are some of the topics dealt with in this section.
• Section 8 deals with the increasing role of automation in buildings, in order to achieve a higher energy and environmental performance. Efficient lighting systems, energy and smart management in buildings, as well as measures to reduce water consumption are discussed.
• Finally, Section 9 deals with the energy refurbishment of existing buildings. Methodologies for the energy audit of existing buildings as well as of urban areas are presented. Various technologies for energy-efficient building renovation are presented, including innovative ones, and a cost-benefit analysis of the building renovations is proposed.

The authors of the various chapters are researchers and scientists with a high reputation on an international level, with comprehensive and updated knowledge of specific topics.

We hope that the great efforts done to put together the various contributions of this handbook will meet the expectations of many readers around the world.

Chapter 2

Policies, Recommendations and Standards (International Technical Standards, Main Laws and Regulations; EU Directives; Energy Labeling)

Chapter Outline

• 2.1 European Union Energy Efficiency Policies for Buildings
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. The Early EU Energy Efficiency Policies for Buildings
    • 2.1 The Save Directive
  • 3. The 2000 Action Plan
  • 4. The European Climate Change Programme
  • 5. The Energy Performance of Building Directive (EPBD 2002)
  • 6. The Green Paper 2005 and the Energy Efficiency Action Plan 2006
  • 7. The Recast of the EPBD (2010)
  • 8. The Cost-Optimal Methodology
  • 9. Nearly Zero Energy Buildings
    • 9.1 The EPBD 2018
  • 10. The Energy Service Directive
  • 11. The 2020 Energy and Climate Targets
  • 12. The Energy Efficiency Directive
    • 12.1 EED Article 7
    • 12.2 Building Renovation Strategies (EED Article 4)
  • 13. The 2030 EU Energy and Climate Targets
    • 13.1 Financial Instruments
    • 13.2 Energy Service Companies
    • 13.3 Building Technical Equipment and Appliances
  • 14. Conclusions
  • References
  • Further Reading
• 2.2 North American Guidelines for Energy Efficiency in Buildings
  • 1. Introduction and Overview
  • 2. Regulatory Environment in the United States and Canada
    • 2.1 Codes, Standards, Rating Systems, and Guidelines: Definitions and Differences
    • 2.2 Current Status of Code Development, Adoption, and Compliance Enforcement
  • 3. Historical Review of Energy Standards/Codes Development
    • 3.1 General Approach to Energy Codes in North America
    • 3.2 United States
    • 3.3 Canada
    • 3.4 Comparison to Europe
  • 4. The Parallel Advent and Growth of Green Building Standards and Codes
  • 5. Code Adoption Versus Enforcement and Effectiveness
  • 6. Future Perspective
    • 6.1 Performance Versus Prescriptive Code Requirements
    • 6.2 Maintaining Efficiency, Energy Labeling, and Reporting
    • 6.3 Net-Zero or Nearly Net-Zero Energy Buildings
    • 6.4 Retrofitting Existing Buildings
    • 6.5 Integration of Renewable Energy, Smart Buildings, and Buildings as Prosumers
    • 6.6 Moving Beyond Individual Buildings
  • 7. Summary and Impact
  • References
• Further Reading
• 2.3 Asian Legislation for Energy Efficiency in Buildings
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Status of Building Energy Efficiency in Asia
    • 2.1 China
    • 2.2 Japan
    • 2.3 India
    • 2.4 Singapore
    • 2.5 Hong Kong
    • 2.6 Indonesia
    • 2.7 Others
  • 3. Obstacles and Recommendations
  • References
  • Further Reading

Chapter 2.1

European Union Energy Efficiency Policies for Buildings

Paolo Bertoldi* European Commission DG JRC, Ispra, Italy
^* Disclaimer: The views expressed are purely those of the author and may not in any circumstances be regarded as stating an official position of the European Commission.

Abstract

Buildings (residential and nonresidential) consume about 40% of final energy in the European Union (EU) and are responsible for about 36% of EU CO₂ emissions. Buildings offer a large energy-saving potential. This has resulted in a strong attention to the building sector in the EU energy and climate policies since the 1970s. Energy in buildings is mainly used for heating, cooling, and ventilation (indoor air conditioning), hot water production, lighting, and domestic appliances (including ITC, i.e., televisions, computers, modems, etc.). Although many of the energy efficiency projects are cost effective in the sense that the investment costs are repaid in a short number of years (relatively short pay-back period or positive net present value), still investments in energy efficiency are lower than expected from an economic point of view and with a perfect informed and rational end-user. In literature, this has been defined as the “energy efficiency gap” (Hirst and Brown, 1990; Jaffe and Stavins, 1994) between the cost-minimization investment and the level of investments actually taking place. Moreover, there is the technical available energy efficiency potential, part of which could be cost effective at the societal level by including externalities (e.g., reduction of pollution, reduction of CO₂ emissions) and other nonenergy benefits (e.g., health, productivity gains, etc.). Researchers have identified several barriers to investments in energy efficiency and have proposed adoption of energy-efficiency programmes, policies, and packages of policies to overcome these barriers.

Keywords

EU energy policy; Save directive; European climate change programme; Energy service directive; Energy efficiency directive; ...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Contributors
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Policies, Recommendations and Standards (International Technical Standards, Main Laws and Regulations; EU Directives; Energy Labeling)
• Chapter 3: From Efficient to Sustainable and Zero Energy Consumption Buildings
• Chapter 4: Life-Cycle Assessment of Buildings
• Chapter 5: Steady-State and Dynamic Codes, Critical Review, Advantages and Disadvantages, Accuracy, and Reliability
• Chapter 6: Building Envelope
• Chapter 7: High Efficiency Plants and Building Integrated Renewable Energy Systems
• Chapter 8: Building Automation for Energy Efficiency
• Chapter 9: Energy Efficiency in Building Renovation
• Chapter 10: Conclusions
• Index