Website: www.EULEB.info
Summary
The European research project "EULEB - European high quality Low Energy Buildings" intends to provide information about good examples of energy efficient buildings in use, in order to reduce prejudices and lack of knowledge of many key actors in the building market. Therefore, a multilingual CD and website was produced, containing detailed information about 25 buildings from all over Europe including measured data about energy consumptions, construction costs, comfort and user acceptance.
150 000 copies of the CD resulting from this work have been disseminated in the beginning of 2007 through European magazines reaching the target groups of architects and engineers as well as investors and property developers all over Europe. Furthermore, all information is available on the project website. The project was performed by a European consortium of five Universities and a European umbrella organisation and it was partly funded by the Intelligent Energy - Europe programme.
Results
The building analysis was a quite exciting process, as most of the buildings have never been evaluated in terms of total energy performance before (i.e. calculating primary energy consumptions for heating, cooling, ventilation and lighting). But apart from a few exceptions, all buildings proved their great performance in terms of building costs, energy consumption and user acceptance compared to their respective national average values, which are mentioned in more detail in each buildings' performance analysis. To manage the challenging task of comparing the buildings with regard to the different locations and the different use, the results have been grouped by building type and climatic zone allowing a careful "benchmarking".
The Economy-Benchmarking shows a significant variance of the total building costs, within one building type and on climatic zone. But discounting some extreme values, general statements can be found: The total building costs for office buildings constitute generally about 1400 and 2100 €/(m² usable floor area). For the educational buildings this value generally reaches between 1000 and 1500 €/(m² usable floor area).
Comparing the energy consumptions of the 25 buildings again brought a significant variance even within one building type and climatic zone. But again, a general statement could be that, for example, for all three building types, a total primary energy consumption between 100 and 220 kWhPrim/(m² usable floor area) can be achieved.
The overall user acceptance has been compared in the Quality benchmarking diagram. Generally positive results are obvious, independent of the building type and the climatic zone. These good examples show clearly that the prejudices against low energy buildings must not be true and that these buildings perform very well.
The results in combination with permanent positive feedback received from the different target groups during the dissemination activities show the success of this promotion activity as well as the large number of visitors on the website from all over the world. Thus it can be expected, that in mid- and long-term this activity will achieve its benefits and lead to a greater and faster acceptance and spread of both new and retrofit energy efficient buildings. These attractive buildings will save a lot of energy, reduce CO2-emissions and provide high quality for the users at the same time without being more expensive than typical buildings of today.
To find similar reports, click on a keyword below:
Architects/Architecture
: Building Certification
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: Decision Makers
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: Heat/Heating
: Intelligent Energy - Europe 2003-2006
: Local Government
: New Buildings
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REHVA - Federation of European Heating & Air-Conditioning Association
Universität Dortmund Chair for Environmental Architecture
ABITA - Interuniversity Center Università degli Studi di Firenze
UPC - Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya AiE - Departament de Construccions Arquitectòniques 1
LEARN - Low Energy Architecture Research Unit London Metropolitan University
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