Abstract
Residential buildings account for the 63% of the total energy consumption of the building stock. The existing residential building stock exceeds the number of newly built dwellings in most developed countries. Therefore, the energy efficient renovation of the existing housing stock is imperative in order to reduce the building energy consumption. For this reason, European Union ranked the improvement of the buildings' energy performance as a high priority in its research agenda. Following Europe's 20:20:20 objective, this case study investigates refurbishment scenarios in order to achieve Nearly Zero Energy Buildings (NZEBs) in Cyprus. The research focuses on the Multi-family House typology, as classified in the framework of the Intelligent Energy Europe EPISCOPE project and specifically on retrofitting a Multi-family building constructed after 2006. A representative Multi-family building from the corresponding residential building typology in Cyprus was chosen and modelled using the software interface of the official Simplified Building Energy Model tool (iSBEM_Cy) for issuing Energy Performance Certificates (EPC). The study investigates whether it is possible for such a building to reach the Nearly Zero Energy Building standards with the implementation of the national energy performance requirements and identifies the lurking obstacles and challenges through building simulations.
Highlights
The built environment is the largest industrial sector in economic terms; it is the largest in terms of resource flow [1]
This study focuses on the conversion of an existing Multi-Family Building, representing one of the main residential typologies in Cyprus [22] (43.3% of prevalence among the residential building stock), into a Nearly Zero Energy Buildings (NZEBs) and it highlights the arising challenges
The results indicate that the refurbishment of a Multi Family House constructed after 2006 into nearly Zero Energy Building, as defined by the Directive 366/2014, is not financially viable, with payback periods of more than 25 years, even when the money for the investment is paid immediately
Summary
The built environment is the largest industrial sector in economic terms; it is the largest in terms of resource flow [1]. European Union (EU), the second economy worldwide, while consuming one-fifth of the energy produced in the world, has only few stocks of energy resources [3]. Under this threat, the European Union aims to attain a more sustainable future and focuses on the existing building stock by identifying the potential energy conservation of the building sector. The improvement of the energy performance of the existing residential stock in every country is essential since the operational cost, the energy consumption and the carbon dioxide emissions are key concerns of Europe in order to achieve the EU 2020 goals
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