REHVA MANIFESTO For sustainable, healthy and affordable buildings

On 28 May, REHVA finished the drafting of its REHVA MANIFESTO For sustainable, healthy and affordable buildings - the “2050 ready building” pact. The document emphasises the crucial role of buildings in achieving EU's 2050 carbon neutrality goals.

Key principles include:

English

Meeting the current and future UK challenges for sustainable building designs – Case studies

This paper uses two case studies to illustrate the process of building design with due regard to sustainable construction and how the recent changes in legislations affect the way buildings are designed in the UK. Two real case studies cover housing and commercial office sectors. These case studies indicate that a performance based design approach exploiting building simulation offers a building with an improved indoor comfort, lower carbon emissions and added value to the client. Finally, this paper offers some insight into future developments of the UK legislations.

Measurements and modelling of an earth-to-air heat exchanger for retail building ventilation

An earth-to-air pipe type heat exchanger (EAHE) is a simple and effective ventilation system component, used for preconditioning of the fresh air supplied to a building. This paper presents two sets of results of operational parameters long-term measurements and energy analysis of EAHEs, located under two different retail buildings of floor area over 1000 square meters each.  

Analysis on CO2 Emissions Reduction Effect of Zero Energy Multi-famiy Housing to cope with UNFCCC

Korean government established a target to reduce greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions to 30% by 2020 to cope with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and secure its national competitiveness, and prepared a roadmap to develop this project. Especially, the government set up the objective of Zero Energy Consumption for the newly constructed multi-family housings by 2025 to reduce CO2 in the building sector.

EVALUATION OF RENEWABLE ENERGY SYSTEM IN CHINA’S GREEN BUILDING ASSESSMENT METHOD (GBAS)

Utilizing renewable energy systems (RES) is an important part of the design and development of greenbuildings. However, it is unreasonable to assess renewable energy utilization (REU) only with the netratio of renewable energy earning to a buildings total energy consumption, while ignoring the systemefficiency of RES with the additional conventional energy consumption, such as electricity. In this paper,the energy quality coefficient (EQC) is introduced to describe the quality of energy, while the energyconversion coefficient (ECC) is applied to evaluate energy system efficiency.

Energy self sufficiency with renewable sources biomass and wind in the rehabilitation project of an old rural building complex in Sicily (Italy)

BEST Dept. has been involved with Regione Sicilia in a research work of the UE MéRITE program for the development of integrated territorial management experiences in pilot areas. Main project goal was to design appropriate retrofit solutions and technolog

Design guidelines for the Efficient Integration ofRenewable Energy systems and techniques in newbuild settlements in Europe

The White Paper on renewable Energy proposes market measures for fair access to the electricitymarket, fiscal and financing measures, a bio-energy initiative and improved building regulations. Thebuilding's sector represents 20 to 45% of the total energy consumption in the various European countries. A project called RESSET has been undertaken with the aim to study and propose globalstrategies, tools and guidelines that will promote the efficient and cost effective global implementation of Renewable Energy Sources systems and techniques in new-build settlements in Europe.

IDEEB, a new EU-project for construction of offices with low environmental impact and required indoor comfort

Today the use of energy efficient technology and renewable energy sources have not become mainstream in the building industry. One of the main reasons for this is thought to be that each part in the building is considered separately. The approach in the newly started EU-project, IDEEB, is to adopt comprehensive view. This considers the building itself and its installations as one energy system to achieve the required indoor comfort at the same time as reducing environmental impact.

Energy use patterns in off-grid houses.

The project is a survey of 12 'off-grid' households across Canada. The objective was to document off-grid energy use and lifestyle patterns to determine if there are lessons or examples of energy conservation that apply to conventional grid-connected houses. The houses operate on systems using renewable energy as the primary source of electricity. An airtightness test was performed on 10 houses (two houses were not viable for testing because of renovations).

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