Higher Energy Efficiency Standards Research Articles

Modern Thermal Energy Storage Systems Dedicated to Autonomous Buildings

This paper presents a detailed analysis of the research into modern thermal energy storage systems dedicated to autonomous buildings. The paper systematises the current state of knowledge concerning thermal energy storage systems and their use of either phase change materials or sorption systems; it notes their benefits, drawbacks, application options, and potential directions for future development. The rapid proliferation of studies on installation systems, new composites, and phase change materials requires a systematisation of the subject related to short- and long-term thermal energy storage in building structures. This paper focuses on assessing the validity of the current improved thermal energy storage solutions for buildings with very high energy efficiency standards and buildings that are energy-independent. The paper presents the current results of the energy and economic analyses of the use of heat storage systems in buildings. This paper shows the optimal heat storage systems for autonomous buildings. Moreover, it also shows other potential ways to develop systems and composites capable of storing heat in autonomous buildings.

Do housing rental and sales markets incentivise energy-efficient retrofitting of western Germany’s post-war apartments? Challenges for property owners, tenants, and policymakers

A post-World War 2 building boom in western Germany (the original Bundesrepublik) produced a cohort of some 8 million apartments, built in 1946–1979, that are relatively homogeneous in design and materials. On average, these apartments are very energy-inefficient, consuming around 147 kWh of heating energy per square meter of floor area per year (kWh/m2/y). Retrofitting them to about 50 kWh/m2/y is necessary to meet Germany’s climate goals. Considerable skill and infrastructure have developed to attempt to achieve this, but it is expensive. This study investigates whether sales and rental markets disincentivise property owners from retrofitting these apartments to high energy efficiency standards. Data from sales and rental advertisements in 2019–2021 in Germany’s largest online housing advertisement portal, Immoscout24, were used to estimate market sales and rental premiums for energy efficiency in these apartments. For property owners who retrofit apartments then sell them, sales premiums for energy efficiency generally fail to compensate for the retrofit costs, unless the renovation is subsidised. Meanwhile, for purchasers, the reduction in energy costs due to higher energy efficiency does not compensate for the higher purchase price. Likewise, for landlords/landladies who retrofit apartments then rent them out, the rental premiums due to higher energy efficiency are nowhere near sufficient to compensate for the retrofit costs. Tenants, however, can often offset the rental premium through energy savings. In all four cases, there is regional variation. Based on a detailed investigation of this market for energy efficiency, this study suggests specific policy interventions to compensate for these market anomalies.

Carbon assessment of building shell options for eco self-build community housing through the integration of building energy modelling and life cycle analysis tools

To achieve the UK's net-zero carbon transition by 2050, new homes need to be designed to high energy efficiency standards and minimise life cycle carbon emissions. This study develops a method that integrates building energy modelling (BEM) and life cycle assessment (LCA) tools, IES Virtual Environment (IES VE) and One Click LCA, to conduct a life cycle assessment of the operational and embodied carbon impacts of a typical terraced building shell in an eco self-build community housing (ESBC) project, using Water Lilies as a case study. It evaluates and compares the 60-year life cycle carbon impacts of six design options that apply different insulation materials to the case study building shell. The results are based on grid-connected Future Energy Scenarios (FES) that have different carbon intensities predicted over time and the microgrid-connected Water Lilies Community Energy (WLCE) scenario that is operationally net-zero carbon. Depending on the FES, embodied carbon accounted between 59 and 80% of total emissions compared to 20–41% from operational carbon across design options. The results show that operational carbon is highly sensitive to the percentage of renewables in the energy mix of the grid, which is difficult to predict, and can significantly influence the design choice. As such, future researchers should account for predicted changes to the carbon intensity of the grid by applying a similar method to that proposed. Overall, the integration of IES VE and One Click LCA provided a more streamlined life cycle assessment to help inform early design decisions by enabling energy consumption simulation in BEM to assess operational carbon emissions and the automated transfer of building materials from the BEM model to the LCA tool to assess embodied carbon emissions. The limitations included the unavailability of material-specific data in early design stage plans, the inability to automatically transfer the timber frame structure from IES VE to One Click LCA, and the uncertainty of future energy trends.

Energy consumption in intermittently heated residential buildings: Light Steel Framing vs hollow brick masonry constructive system

The hollow brick masonry and reinforced concrete construction is the most common and technically known constructive system in southern European countries. However, more industrialised alternatives have arisen, such as the Light Steel Framing (LSF). Nevertheless, an important research gap concerning the performance of this constructive system and its comparison with the brick masonry buildings was found. The shortage of available experimental data hinders the optimisation of these buildings towards high energy efficiency standards and indoor comfort. In this sense, the primary aim of this research is to assess the opportunities and limitations of each constructive system in terms of minimising energy consumption and providing a comfortable indoor environment during the heating season, considering an intermittent heating pattern. The novelty of the present work is the long-term experimental campaign involving the construction and monitoring of two identical test cells, differing only in the constructive system. The test cells are located in the Aveiro district (Portugal) and were monitored over an entire year. The results revealed a lower energy consumption of LSF test cell in every monitored month. On the other hand, this test cell is more responsive to the external weather stimulus and, therefore, more susceptible to the nocturnal temperature drop and overheating during warmer conditions. The present work intends to achieve a long-term value by providing the scientific community with original data within a research scope where this information is not abundant.

Ideology and Value Determinants of Public Support for Energy Policies in the U.S.: A Focus on Western States

Energy policy is often a contentious issue in the U.S. in the areas of infrastructure, conservation, and price discrimination. From the siting of new pipelines, conservation regulations, and variable pricing based on times and usage, many policies have been met by intense opposition as well as support from a variety of sources. In this context, this study examines individual-level attributes (e.g., political ideology, environmental values, and demographic characteristics) that lead to support for or opposition to infrastructure, conservation, and price discrimination policies. The identification of demographic and value correlates of energy policy preferences is important for the successful development of energy policies. Data from 2019 random household surveys in the U.S. western states of California, Idaho, Oregon and Washington are used to examine the variation in views on a variety of energy policies. Multivariate analyses reveal that those with more liberal political ideology and people holding stronger pro-environmental values (as measured by the New Ecological Paradigm) were more likely to support conservation campaigns, energy efficiency, funding for renewable energy technology and price discrimination policies than those who held more conservative views. Several demographic variables also have a significant impact on support for or opposition to policies concerning infrastructure, conservation, and price discrimination. Younger people and people with higher levels of formal education are more likely to support voluntary energy conservation campaigns and increased funding for research into renewable energy technologies, and people with higher incomes are more supportive of requiring high-energy efficiency standards in new construction. Finally, state residency independently affected policy preferences with Idahoans’ views more consistent with political conservatives and those lower on the NEP than residents of the other three western states. These findings should be useful to policy makers as they work toward the development of energy policies.

Investigating the impacts of a changing climate on the risk of overheating and energy performance for a UK retirement village adapted to the nZEB standards

The death toll of the 2003 heat wave in Europe exceeded 35,000 heat-related deaths. The elderly population were the most affected. The current paradigm within the construction industry in cold-dominant countries is to design/retrofit buildings with high levels of insulation. Whilst thermal comfort may be reached during colder months with this approach, the risk of overheating can be increased during hotter months. This paper aims to examine the impacts of a changing climate on the risk of overheating and energy performance for a UK retirement village. For this study, the buildings within the retirement village will be designed to reach the nearly zero energy building standard. Consequently, the risk of overheating of the buildings within the retirement village as they currently stand and as zero energy buildings will be investigated under current and future climatic conditions. The analysis is carried out using thermal analysis simulation software (TAS, Edsl). Combined heat and power and combined cooling, heat and power will be investigated as mitigating strategies with regard to overheating. The results of this study do not undermine the importance of continuing to improve the energy efficiency of existing buildings but rather highlight that the approach undertaken should be reconsidered. Practical application: Currently, there is emphasis placed on retrofitting and designing buildings, with high energy efficiency standards. Whilst this is in line with our vision as a society towards reaching a decarbonised, sustainable future, this work highlights that doing so, carries risks with regard to overheating. Nonetheless, the results demonstrate that with the incorporation of suitable mitigation strategies and adequate ventilation strategies, it is possible to achieve an energy efficient building that meets the heating and cooling demand (and thereby thermal comfort of occupants) during the heating and non-heating season.

The Abuses of Net Present Value in Energy Efficiency Standards

Consumers are often blamed for not making necessary investments in energy-efficient durables despite that these investments have positive net present value (NPV). Several papers have argued that when investments have option-like characteristics (e.g., irreversibility, uncertainty, flexible timing, and lumpiness), the aphorism “invest if the net present value of investing exceeds zero” isn’t the best advice. Yet, curiously, the Department of Energy (DOE) in the United States proposes new regulations mandating higher energy efficiency standards for consumer durables on the basis of positive NPV over an investment’s lifetime. In this paper, we provide a step-by-step deconstruction of DOE’s NPV methodology and show that DOE’s method purges volatility, volatility persistence, and nonstationarity that are otherwise present in energy prices. As a result, DOE’s projections of future energy prices are artificially smooth and statistically biased, casting serious doubt on the reliability of the magnitude of energy savings from energy-efficient durables. Our results, therefore, support the notion that consumers’ behavior isn’t irrational.

A relevant data selection method for energy consumption prediction of low energy building based on support vector machine

Low energy buildings (LEBs) are being considered as a promising solution for the built environment to satisfy high-energy efficiency standards. The technology is based on lowering the overall heat transmission coefficient value (U-value) of the buildings envelope and increasing a heat capacity thus creating a higher thermal inertia. However, LEB introduces a large time constant compared to conventional building due to which it slows the rate of heat transfer between interior of building and outdoor environment and alters the indoor climate regardless of sudden changes in climatic conditions. Therefore, it is challenging to estimate and predict thermal energy demand for such LEBs.This work focuses on artificial intelligence (AI) model to predict energy consumption of LEB. Two kinds of AI modeling approaches: “all data” and “relevant data” are considered. The “all data” uses all available training data and “relevant data” uses a small representative day dataset and addresses the complexity of building non-linear dynamics by introducing past day climatic impacts behavior. This extraction is based on dynamic time warping pattern recognition methods. The case study consists of a French residential LEB. The numerical results showed that “relevant data” modeling approach that relies on small representative data selection has higher accuracy (R2=0.98; RMSE=3.4) than “all data” modeling approach (R2=0.93; RMSE=7.1) to predict heating energy load.

Energy Costs, Residential Mobility, and Segregation in a Shrinking City

In debates related to energy poverty, the link to questions of residential segregation remains somewhat peripheral. Because, usually, only energy-poor households are at the focus and residential mobility is not addressed, the interdependencies between households’ energy costs and the residential segregation of cities remain out of sight. Concern that energy efficiency measures could foster socio-spatial segregation in cities has recently emerged in Germany. If only households with higher incomes can afford housing with high energy efficiency standards, whereas low income households tend to choose non-refurbished but, in sum, more affordable housing stock, an increasing concentration of poor households in poor housing conditions would result. German energy efficiency and CO2 reduction policies are relatively insensitive to such questions. Using survey data from a small shrinking city in Germany, we explore how energy costs are interrelated with residential location decisions and, thus, with segregation processes and patterns. Shrinking cities represent an interesting case because, here, a decreasing demand for housing stimulates residential mobility and paves the way for dynamic reconfigurations of socio-spatial patterns. We found that energy-related aspects of homes play a role in location decisions. Low income households seek to minimize housing costs in general, paying specific attention to heating systems, thermal insulation and costs. Resulting segregation effects depend very much on where affordable and, at the same time, energy-efficient housing stock is spatially concentrated in cities. These findings should be taken into consideration for future policies on energy in existing dwellings.

Do First Mover Advantages for Producers of Energy Efficient Appliances Exist? The Case of Refrigerators

Energy efficiency regulation is an important driver for innovations in environmental technologies. Improvements of energy efficiency do not only contribute to reach envi-ronmental policy targets, they can be furthermore economically profitable. E.g. private households can reduce their costs in the long term by using efficient household appli-ances. But how can the specific competitive position on this market be assessed for German producers, and how strong is the competitiveness from firms coming from emerging economies? We analyse – as an example - the global refrigerator market, using the lead market approach for environmental innovations. As our results show, Germany has the most lead market potentials for energy-efficient refrigerators, followed by Korea und Italy. First mover advantages for high-tech energy efficient appliances can be realised on the German market. This is backed by high en-ergy efficiency standards in Europe which diffuse after some years to other countries. Since the pay-off time for energy efficient household appliances is with 7 to 10 years quite long, also a cost strategy with low prices can be successful. Especially in the case when the price of electricity and the national income are low. Markets for such products are for example in Asia and Russia. Producers use the existence of both strategy options to operate with different brands and product lines in different market niches at the same time. For firms in countries that do not have sufficient lead market potentials, innovations in energy efficiency must be targeted to fit the preferences of users in the lead market. The screening of the lead market can take on varying degrees of intensity. A good way for a company to estab-lish ties with a lead market is via producers with long experience on the Lead Market. It can be realised through a simple sales cooperation with local producers or a merger with a local producer of the lead market.

Sustainable Developments for Future Building

Welcome to this special issue of Indoor and Built Environment. This special issue of journal papers is based on the advanced research studies that had been carried out by the Center for Sustainable Healthy Buildings (CSHeB) in Korea. The 20 papers in this special issue of Indoor and Built Environment were selected from a symposium presentation held on February 10, 2011, in Seoul, South Korea. These papers were further developed by the authors and peer reviewed by experts. The International Society of the Built Environment (ISBE) is proud to be associated with this special issue and recommend you to study the papers presented. ISBE shares the same missions and beliefs with the CSHeB of Korea. We hope by our disseminations, we may contribute to the further advancement of innovative technologies for sustainable built environments; better designs that will improve health and wellbeing for everyone and an influence on policies and planning for sustainable development of healthy buildings for all cultures and nationalities. CSHeB has become one of the leading research organizations in all the subjects concerning the built environment, emphasizing the need for interdisciplinary research into architectural, medical, psychological, physiological, social and environmental aspects of healthy buildings. Progress has been made in understanding the need for social integration, design, construction, maintenance and occupants’ requirements for development of sustainable and healthy buildings. A number of reports and studies have been published providing the latest ‘‘state-of-the-art’’ dissemination of research relating to lighting, ventilation, social environment, indoor air quality, acoustics, thermal comfort, moisture and structure for the built environment. The main focus of this special issue of papers was on the sustainable developments required for future building and considering the need for a future society with an increasing portion of elderly to relative young population, and also the governments’ demand for energy-efficient buildings with low carbon emissions. There is a need to consider the implication to building design and planning to accommodate and to provide a proper provision for the aged and to ensure how healthy environments can be achieved within low-carbon architecture, to satisfy the occupants’ requirements for comfort, environmental quality and minimization of environmental harm that could affect the health and wellbeing of people living and working in these future built environments. This special issue is of interest to broad interdisciplinary readers including academics, practitioners and consultants. Sustainable development and sustainable buildings are important part of architecture and governments’ guidelines and building regulations in many countries of the world. Many governments of the world including the UK and Europe, Korea, Japan and China are setting targets for reduction in carbon emissions and therefore higher energy efficiency standards in buildings and this has an important implication on the materials used due to the embodied carbon, ventilation and indoor air quality requirements due to increasing air-tightness of buildings and more efficient lighting systems and a control of glare. There is also the consideration to look after our elderly, so they will be able to live with dignity with adequate provision for their care and needs within a holistic, healthy community such as in Korea.

Research of the British Residential Building Designs and Energy Conservation

As the British has a cold and rainy climate, which is variability, its relatively high energy efficiency standards has been set up. Energy efficient building in the United Kingdom in the technical measures three main areas: 1) use of structural measures to raise the walls, roof and windows of the thermal insulation properties; 2) the use of solar energy; 3) improving the heating system. Currently the United Kingdom to promote passive solar house without external mechanical action, heat-absorbing insulation materials of construction for the media, the use of natural cold and hot air exchange, to the use of solar energy.

Policy options towards an energy efficient residential building stock in the EU-27

The EU-27 residential building stock offers high potential for energy efficiency gains. The policies already in place or proposed to improve the energy efficiency and thus the environmental performance focus on new buildings and major renovations of existing buildings. However, there might be additional measures that could lead to further energy efficiency improvements. In particular, the installation of roofs or windows that show a high thermal efficiency outside major renovations offer a large improvement potential. In this study, the potential environmental and economic impacts of two types of such policy options were analysed: first, measures that require high energy efficiency standards when roofs or windows have to be replaced; and, second, measures that accelerate the replacement of building elements. The results suggest that the two policies offer the potential for substantial additional energy savings. In addition, the installation of energy efficient building elements comes at negative net cost. When the replacement of building elements is accelerated, however, the additional costs do not outweigh the energy cost savings.