How to create a performance-based regulation on ventilation – the French Experience

In France, in Residential buildings, since 1982 the ventilation regulation imposes air flow rate to be continuously extracted from every room with humidity production. A boosted level of air flow rate shall be reachable in the kitchen. Since the mid-80s demand-controlled ventilation based on humidity level in each room has been allowed, provided that the system is validated by a national commission. In practice, for 40 years every new residential building has a mechanical ventilation system and 95% of them are centralised extract only systems. Since the beginning of the 2010s almost all of them have a humidity-based control. While efficient to mitigate the risk of moisture in buildings, the efficiency of those systems for other pollutants is still under investigation and the very prescriptive regulation limits the innovation possibilities to optimize the energy performance. To tackle this issue and allow the development of systems that would be more energy efficient (hybrid ventilation, low pressure systems, etc.), the French ministry for construction has set-up a working group to create a new performance-based regulation for ventilation.
This working group has defined Key Performance Indicator for ventilation systems, it evaluates the ability of a ventilation system to provide good indoor air quality through indicators on 4 criteria: humidity level, CO2 level, fictive pollutant P1 exposure (emitted constantly) and fictive pollutant P2 exposure (emitted during cooking events. The working group has also discussed validation conditions for systems.
This new performance-based regulation gives specification for what a ventilation system shall provide. This will help to promote ventilation system in refurbishment and decrease CO2 emissions of existing buildings which are heated through combustion appliance for more than 50% of them. It shall also foster the development of ventilation systems with less embodied energy.