Implementation

The world is seeing a rapid increase of cooling of buildings1. This is driven by multiple factors, such as urbanization and densification, climate change and elevated comfort expectations together with economic growth in hot and densely populated regions of the world. Additionally, disruptive events, such as extreme heat and heat waves are occurring more often and are expected to become a common phenomenon by mid-century. The trend towards cooling seems inexorable. It is therefore mandatory to steer this development towards sustainable solutions.

According to the legal regulations and the rules of technology (as generally accepted) new buildings are to be constructed permanently airtight.

Reduction of energy consumption and green house gas emissions of buildings is a great challenge in Europe. In this context French energy performance regulation, RT2012, requires an improvement of the buildings' airtightness. In airtight buildings, ventilation must be perfectly controlled to ensure good indoor air quality.  However, many failures are observed when ventilation systems are inspected (Jobert, 2012). They are mainly due to bad conception, poor implementation and lack of maintenance.

The process of implementation of the EPBD in Austria is now carried out for several years. Thecalculation scheme for asset rating is finished, the operational rating procedure is still being discussed.One of the major problems in Austria is the fact that most building laws are under the responsibility ofthe nine Austrian provinces. Therefore all political decisions like baseline and limits of the energydemand for the building codes are difficult to achieve. These values are therefore still underdiscussion.