Building Energy Efficiency in Cold Climates

Abstract

Buildings stand for 40% of total energy use internationally and there is a similar share in many countries. Therefore, building energy use and supply is a huge and separate engineering field. Due to high building energy use, energy efficiency in buildings has been a relevant topic since 1970. Areas with cold climates have had an even bigger problem in increasing energy efficiency in buildings due to its cold climate conditions and high heat demand. In this article an overview how energy efficiency idea has been developed and implemented in cold climate will be presented. Implementation of energy efficiency in cold climate is relevant word-wide, because if some energy efficiency concepts can give significant results in cold climate, then they may give even better results in other area. Before specific energy efficiency measures are presented, an overview of the energy use in buildings problem will be presented.