Active and Passive Solutions for an Energy Efficient Building

Abstract

In addition, the majority of electricity consumed in buildings (58%) should come from renewable sources. Together with solar thermal, modern biomass, and district heating, overall renewables could ramp up to 81%, from 36% today’s contribution for the sector. Nonetheless, to materialize these predictions, a global investment of around USD 32 trillion (28 trillion euros) is expected between now and 2050. In the European Union, the nearly zero-energy building standard (nZEB) will be obligatory for all new buildings by 2021. Although the increase in energy demand will be reduced with this measure, it does not really affect the energy consumption at present. It is imperative to design energy efficiency retrofit and renovation financing schemes. For many years to come, only measures taken in existing buildings will have a significant effect on the total energy demand in the building stock. Firstly, this work presents a brief analysis of active and passive solutions for an energy-efficient building. Secondly, in this work it identified a set of active and passive solutions, which, in a combined way, develop the thermal performance of a residential building, allowing it to become energetically autonomous. The program EnergyPlus was used to execute the thermo-energetic simulations for the diverse scenarios considered, in the study case. The numerical results showed that the implementation of passive solutions improves the energy performance of the buildings, and the use simultaneously of an active solution, a renewable energy source, allows the reach of the energy-autonomous of the building.