Representative typology of buildings: case study of hellenic non residential buildings

Abstract

ABSTRACT Buildings have a significant energy and environmental footprint. In Greece, there are about 4.1 million buildings, a quarter of which are exclusive-use nonresidential buildings. The aim of this work is to define the average construction and technical characteristics of the existing Hellenic nonresidential buildings, and to assess their energy performance, responding to the need for more information and insight on this sector. The work exploits data from about 2400 building energy audits that include general information as well as specific characteristics on the envelope construction and the electromechanical installations. The information were first screened by a data quality control and were then organized into 239 classes that correspond to the Hellenic nonresidential building typology, defined in terms of building use, vintage, and location. The analysis revealed that there is a great potential for upgrading the existing building stock, since only 4% of the audited buildings meet the current minimum thermal envelope code requirements and 15% are in compliance with code recommendations for the technical installations. Overall, only 1% of the buildings have fully compliant envelope and technical installations. The calculated total final energy use averages 217.5kWh/m2 for the entire NR sector, ranging between 89.0kWh/m2 and 530.0kWh/m2 among the different building uses.