Achieving nearly zero energy buildings in Greece

Abstract

Energy consumption of buildings in Europe is still high despite their significant savings potential. The European Union has issued a number of directives to reduce energy consumption in buildings in its Member States. Each country has put in place the best minimum requirements to make its buildings more energy efficient. By the beginning of 2021 at the latest; all new and deep renovated buildings must have almost zero energy consumption. The latter is the subject of this paper, which focuses on identifying Greece’s energy requirements for newly built buildings to meet the requirements of a nearly zero energy building (nZEB).Two categories of building use are considered: a typical single-family house and an office building which apply bioclimatic design principles that all newly built buildings have to take into consideration, while all four climatic zones of Greece were looked into. The work presents the combinations - scenarios of building envelope characteristics, electro-mechanical installations, and RES technologies used in the modeled buildings, first to meet the minimum national requirements and secondly to reach minimum energy consumption. The calculations made use of the national program for the determination of the energy efficiency of the TEE KENAK building. The results show that combinations of a variety of building envelope components, electromechanical systems, and RES technologies meet the country’s energy saving targets under its 2030 national energy efficiency plans.