LEED and BREEAM Building Standards and Albanian Law Related to Building Thermal Performance

Abstract

The standardsStandards of energyEnergy and environmental design are improving day by day, are flexible enough, and in continuous change. The designers are the first ones which introduce the inputs into the systemSystems in order to improve it. The overall city should be planned as a socio-natural hybridHybrid system. The LEEDLEED program has been developed in the US since 1998. It has been adopted in almost 40 countriesCountries and it is widely used by public. The LEED standards are based on reducing overall impact rather than on a specific issue or topic, trying to be greenGreen as much as possible. The reliance to outside sources (programs and standards) is also important in order to enlarge the expertise area and the variety of subjects. The green city should be well planned and well documented since the early stage of design, reducing the costsCosts and synchronizing the work of different systems that operates within the buildingBuilding. The LEEDLEED standards involve the environmentalEnvironmental, economicEconomic, and socialSocial impact, regardless at this point the standardsStandards are socially neutral. The city planned according to LEED standards is a socio-neutral hybridHybrid one. On the other hand, BREEAMBuilding Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Methodology (BREEAM) is established since 1990 in the UK and certifies the sustainabilitySustainability of buildingsBuilding. For each environmentalEnvironmental certificationCertification, there exist differences between various criteria related to building energyEnergy efficiencyEfficiency. The evaluation of the performancePerformance improvement over specified baseline requirements is the common point of the two building standardsStandards. The sustainableSustainable assessments such as BREEAMBuilding Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Methodology (BREEAM) or LEEDLEED can be applied or adopted in any region of the world. The Albanian case does not adopt any of them. Based on EPC (energy performancePerformance certificateCertificate), the buildingBuilding is considered to be in compliance with the minimum performancePerformance requirements of energyEnergy, aiming to achieve optimalOptimal levels of energyEnergy consumptionConsumption for a typical use of the building. The buildingBuilding is considered as zero energy building when the ratio of the total energy consumptionEnergy consumption of the current building per sqm of the surface is equal or be less than 50% and the ratio of renewableRenewable energy produced in the building during a year compared to the consumption of total energyEnergy of the current buildingBuilding for one sqm of the surface. Expressed as a percentage is equal to or greater than 50%.