Search results for "NZEB"
showing 10 items of 16 documents
Is the NZEB Benchmarking Approach Suitable for Assessing Energy Retrofit Design?
2013
Currently, many effort have been done to enable energy saving issues in building design and many definitions have been introduced for most performing constructions based on energy balance between energy demand and supply. Recently, the Net Zero Energy Building theory has bypassed old Passive House concept but many questions still remain open. Present work aims to estimate how NZEB requirements matching could be affected by the choice of their definition and the choice of weighting factor system, to be count in the energy balance. NZEB concept is mainly referred to new buildings design. Its application to existing buildings is for sure an hard task provided the architecture and physical cons…
Life cycle energy performances and environmental impacts of a prefabricated building module
2018
Abstract The paper explores the energy performances and environmental impacts of a prefabricated building module located in Messina (Sicily, Italy) through an approach that combines both the non-steady state building simulation and the Life Cycle Assessment methodology. The building uses renewable energy technologies and is usable in emergency situations or as simply temporary housing. Results show that the building module causes the emission of 1.5 t of CO2eq/m2 and consumes 29.2 GJ/m2 of primary energy during its life cycle. The building achieves the Net Zero Energy Building target even if it has relevant environmental impacts in the materials production stage (72% on average of the total…
A review on optimization and cost-optimal methodologies in low-energy buildings design and environmental considerations
2019
Abstract The topic of low-energy buildings received a widespread and growing interest in last years, thanks to energy saving policies of developed countries. The design of a low-energy building is addressed with energy saving measures and renewable energy generation, but the correct assessment of phenomena occurring in a building usually requires to perform dynamic simulations and to analyze multiple scenarios to attain the optimal solution. The optimality of a technical solution may be subject to contrasting constraints and objectives. For this reason, designers may employ mathematical optimization techniques, a non-familiar topic to most of building designers. In this paper, a review on o…
STRATEGIE PER LA RIQUALIFICAZIONE ENERGETICA DELL’EDILIZIA SCOLASTICA IN CLIMA MEDITERRANEO
2018
Il patrimonio edilizio italiano è composto principalmente da costruzioni realizzate nel secondo dopoguerra, quando la speculazione economica e l’urbanizzazione hanno prodotto edifici con caratteristiche di scarsa qualità architettonica ed energetica. Agire sul rendimento energetico degli edifici esistenti, adattandoli alle caratteristiche richieste dalla normativa, a parità di condizioni di comfort, rappresenta una strategia importante per la riduzione dei consumi energetici e per la tutela dell’ambiente. Attraverso l’applicazione di tecnologie e metodologie innovative e la scelta di investimenti adeguati, il retrofit energetico può rappresentare, oggi, la principale opportunità di crescita…
Reaching net zero energy at the neighbourhood scale: feasibility studies in the south of Italy
2020
Il concetto di “edificio a energia netta zero” è stato recentemente implementato in tutti i regolamenti dei paesi europei. Tuttavia, l’approccio dettato dall’Europa si concentra principalmente sulla scala dell’edificio singolo, tralasciando alcuni aspetti riguardanti ad esempio l’interazione di generazione e carico tra edifici e le interazioni energetiche tra edifici. L’obiettivo di questo studio consiste nell’applicazione della definizione di net zero energy building ad un gruppo di edifici ubicati nell’Italia meridionale e caratterizzati da una destinazione d’uso variegata. Lo status quo di una ventina di edifici è stato simulato in ambiente energy plus e sono state successivamente selezi…
Energy Equalization and the Case of the “nZEB Hotels”
2020
Nowadays, energy equalization is one of the many issues concerning the energy policies on the urban scale and in the perspective of reducing the Urban Heat Island effects (UHI-e). The different economic-financial profiles of the interventions implemented in the buildings having a wide range of climatic locations, typological arrangements, architectural-historical constraints, need to be coordinated within unitary local energy-environmental policies inspired by economic-financial as well as environmental issues. The renovation of existing hotels to achieve a nearly Zero-Energy performance is one of the goals of the 2050 EU’s energy policy. This paper presents the nZEB retrofit case of an exi…
Overview and future challenges of nearly zero energy buildings (nZEB) design in Southern Europe
2017
In times of great transition of the European construction sector to energy efficient and nearly zero energy buildings (nZEB), a market observation containing qualitative and quantitative indications should help to fill out some of the current gaps concerning the EU 2020 carbon targets. Next to the economic challenges, there are equally important factors that hinder renovating the existing residential building stock and adding newly constructed high performance buildings. Under these circumstances this paper summarises the findings of a cross-comparative study of the societal and technical barriers of nZEB implementation in 7 Southern European countries. The study analyses the present situat…
Towards Nearly Zero Energy and Environmentally Sustainable Agritourisms: The Effectiveness of the Application of the European Ecolabel Brand
2020
Tourism represents an important economic driver in Italy, being responsible for approximately 13.2% of the total GDP (a value higher than the reference European average) and for nearly 10% of the regional GDP. Among the touristic sectors, the agritourist ones show a persistent growth, experiencing in 2019 a 6.7 point percentage improvement compared to the 2017 figures. Given this situation, the transition towards a low-carbon path, affecting the building sector for some time, should also involve agritourist buildings, through the release of EU directives, member state laws, and technical rules. On the other hand, agritourism sites could be awarded the Community EU Ecolabel. Unfortunately, a…
Near Zero Energy House in Palestine: Identification of the Future Challenges
2015
Most of researches and experiences of the concept of near zero energy buildings (NZEBs) are highly concentrated on the developed countries more than the developing countries due to many reasons related to the different contexts conditions. This paper is a part of a PhD thesis, which is being supervised by the Department of Architecture at the University of Palermo. The paper aims at highlighting the challenges facing the house design in Palestine as a developing country in terms of NZEBs by making a study which is related to discussing different experiences in the field of energy saving strategies in Palestine and some surrounded countries, such as Jordan which shares certain climatic and a…