Energy and Environmental Performance of Solar Thermal Systems in Hotel Buildings

Abstract

The energy policies in Europe include the reduction in energy consumption of buildings along with their environmental impact, focusing mainly on CO2 emissions. In this framework, solar thermal systems used for space heating purposes and Domestic Hot Water production will be studied in detail. Solar thermal systems are one of the most popular ways to provide sanitary hot water in hotel buildings, all over the world and in particular in the Mediterranean. This is due to the fact that over the last forty years they have been proven to be reliable and cost effective.Still, there is more to those systems, than cost efficiency, as it will be discussed in this paper, based on a study carried out for the Greek hotel sector. The analysis of the solar thermal system was done on the basis of technical characteristics and their energy efficiency as well as of the potential energy saving and their environmental impact, focusing mainly on CO2 emissions. The environmental evaluation of the system studied is expressed by means of an integrated environmental approach, based on environmental rating systems namely LEED and BREEAM.Goal of the paper is to present the result of the overall evaluation of the solar thermal system and its contribution to the improvement of the building's energy and environmental performance and also discuss how this affects the building's respective certification.