English

Indoor carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations have played a role in discussions of ventilation and indoor air quality (IAQ) since the 18th century. Those discussions have evolved over the years to focus on the impacts of CO2 concentrations on building occupants, how these concentrations relate to occupant perception of bioeffluents, the use of indoor CO2 concentrations to estimate ventilation rates, and CO2–based demand control ventilation. This paper reviews how indoor CO2 has been dealt with in ventilation and IAQ standards in the context of these issues.

It is estimated that people spend 60-90% of their life in indoor environments. Therefore, it is obvious that indoor air quality (IAQ) and thermal comfort are of highly importance for the health and wellbeing of the population. Consequently, buildings should be designed to ensure proper indoor conditions. Furthermore, the need to mitigate climate change and to reduce energy import dependency, provides additional challenges for the design and operation of buildings and requires a dramatic reduction in their energy consumption and emissions.

The Recast-EPBD1 requires an update of the current (2007/2008) set of CEN-EPB standards. This update work started in 2012 and will result in a new set of CEN-EPB standards.. Where possible this work will be done parallel with ISO. This project is based on EU-Mandate 480. This mandate accepted by CEN, requires a really out of the box thinking approach of the standard developers. This project is coordinated by CENTC371 the “Program Committee on EPBD” and is considered to be a step forward in progressing towards European Energy Codes for Buildings.

Recently the international media like in USA, Canada, UK, Denmark, Germany etc. has been discussing the issue of differences between men and women regarding thermal comfort and the preferred room temperature. This presentation will discuss the issue of thermal comfort and the existing knowledge on the influence of gender, age, race, etc.

The effect of Phase Change Materials (PCMs) to optimize indoor thermal comfort conditions and reduce cooling energy requirement when included in envelope components and materials is demonstrated by an extensive scientific literature (Zhou et al., 2012. Orò et al., 2012). In this view, this research consists of the development and prototyping of an innovative passive cooling polyurethane based membrane with PCMs inclusion for roofing applications (Pisello et al., 2015).

The framework in which the SINHOR project takes place is the "Service Contract R + D + i Relating to Competence Scope of the Ministry of Public Works and Housing" with the research project entitled "Analysis of the energy performance of closures concrete based on maximizing the benefits derived from the thermal inertia". Meeting the "20-20-20" targets for reduction of CO2 emissions necessarily involves a drastic reduction of energy consumption in buildings. SINHOR project is oriented to promote the use of concrete solutions in buildings based on maximizing the benefits of its thermal inerti

Local climate change and in particular, the urban heat island, is the more documented phenomenon of climate change. It deals with the development of higher ambient temperatures in the dense areas of cities suffering from high anthropogenic heat release, compared to the temperature of the surrounding suburban or rural areas. Actually, there are available measurements for about 400 cities around the world. Heat island exists at any latitude and may be present during the day or night period, depending on the local thermal balance.

This paper presents a comparison of Indoor Air Quality in several buildings constructed prior to the implementation of the new Spanish regulation on thermal installations (RITE, 2007 modified on 2013) and some new ones that fully accomplish the requirements of this new regulation.

Choosing the right baseline level of ventilation has a big impact in the calculated energy needs of buildings.

The north of the Iberian Peninsula is characterized by a high level of humidity during the summer.