Heroes of Zero—Implementing the Lessons Learned from Pilot Programs towards Achieving Low-Energy or No Waste in Buildings, Communities, and Cities

A special issue of Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309). This special issue belongs to the section "Building Energy, Physics, Environment, and Systems".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 September 2018) | Viewed by 22549

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Institute for Energy and Environment, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
Interests: building design; energy efficiency in buildings; building environmental control systems; user interface design, thermostats; demand response; behavior
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Guest Editor
International Energy Research Centre, Tyndall National Institute, University College Cork, T12 E138 Cork‎, Ireland
Interests: renewable energies; microgrids; energy management systems; power electronics; energy efficiency; heating ventilation air conditioning systems; system identification; reduced order modelling; control systems; electronic circuits
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The transition towards a low-carbon energy system has become an important scientific target of future decades. Now that ‘business as usual scenarios’ describe an increase in the average temperature of the globe of around 6 °C, it is time to act towards decarbonization in all sectors. Obviously, doing so in the building sector is paramount, either in terms of building efficiency or resources savings and recovery, since such a sector already accounts for around 40% of primary energy used in the world and 35% of greenhouse gases emissions.

The action in the building sector is usually based on the concept of nearly/net zero energy in buildings, although with several specific definitions worldwide. In the EU, nearly-zero-energy buildings are defined as having very high energy performance, in which the low amount of energy required comes mostly from renewable sources. The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive requires all new buildings to be nearly zero-energy by the end of 2020. All new public buildings must be nearly zero-energy by 2018 [EC, 2014].

According to the definition from the United States Environmental Protection Agency, Net Zero should also focus on water and wastes besides energy, thus consuming only as much energy as produced, achieving a sustainable balance between water availability and demand, and eliminating solid waste sent to landfills [EPA, 2017].

However, progress is slower than expected: Such high performance buildings are not yet ready for mass deployment in the market. Although most technologies that are employed are mature, financial barriers are considered by stakeholders as the main barrier, together with the limited development of innovative retrofitting technologies, lack of ambitious policies and energy plans or scaling up of single pilot projects. Moreover, the substantial gap in reliable data on current market activities and on monitored data related to savings and maintenance costs makes it difficult for policy-makers to evaluate the success of their policies [ZEBRA2020 project, CERtus project].

Specific topical keywords of particular interest for this Special Issue include but are not limited to:

  • Nearly/net zero-energy buildings (interventions, etc.);
  • Net-zero waste and net-zero water use in buildings;
  • Passive and autonomous buildings (strategies, technology);
  • Positive energy (blocks of) buildings and communities;
  • Self-consumption and off/zero-grid locations and cases;
  • Workforce upskilling and legislation towards net-zero;
  • Initiatives towards 100% renewable energy sources;
  • Cost-benefit analyses and net-zero funding schemes;
  • Impact of net-zero in building stock and climate,etc.

This Special Issue of Buildings is open to both public submissions and submissions from the Sustainable Places (SP) 2018 delegates.

Prof. Dr. Francesco Guarino
Dr. Therese E. Peffer
Dr. Luciano De Tommasi
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • Net zero-energy buildings
  • Renewable sources

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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14 pages, 1258 KiB  
Article
Monetary Value of a District’s Flexibility on the Spot- and Reserve Electricity Markets
by Emanuele Facchinetti, Beni Rohrbach, Gerko Van der Wel and Andrew Bollinger
Buildings 2018, 8(12), 181; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings8120181 - 18 Dec 2018
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 7942
Abstract
In the future, advanced multi-energy systems are expected to handle an increasing share of fluctuating renewable energy generation through the management of multiple advanced energy conversion and storage technologies operating across different energy carriers. The market diffusion of such concepts of Local Energy [...] Read more.
In the future, advanced multi-energy systems are expected to handle an increasing share of fluctuating renewable energy generation through the management of multiple advanced energy conversion and storage technologies operating across different energy carriers. The market diffusion of such concepts of Local Energy Management—the management of energy supply, demand, and storage within a given geographical area—is expected to provoke a fundamental reorganization of the power generation sector. This work contributes to this topic by estimating the maximum potential economic value attained from using the flexibility of a district to take advantage of operating within multiple electricity markets at the same time. The study is based on the measured demand and production data of a newly built suburban residential district located in Central Switzerland. The actual configuration of the district and the resulting flexibility, as well as an extension with a battery storage system, is used to estimate the economic value of the flexibility. Then, an optimization algorithm manages flexible demand, production, and storage capacities in order to alternatively maximize the revenues/cost savings, self-sufficiency, or share of renewable resources of the district’s energy supply. In this vein, the impact of the way the system operates in the markets regarding the degradation of the battery is assessed and its pay-back-time is estimated. The analysis revealed a considerable profit potential associated with the district thermal and electricity storage flexibility, in particular, when operating on both the spot and reserve electricity markets. Firstly, it was shown that overall energy costs can be minimized through an optimal management of energy conversion and storage systems. Secondly, complementing the infrastructure with batteries and trading flexibility on the spot market would decrease costs by about 43%, while an additional 20% cost decrease could be captured by including trading on the reserve market. Thirdly, it has been shown that operation on the spot- and reserve market does not seem to degrade the battery more than solely operation on the spot market. However, when operating on the spot- and reserve markets, battery amortization would still take about 10 years. Full article
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25 pages, 617 KiB  
Concept Paper
Technical, Financial, and Social Barriers and Challenges in Deep Building Renovation: Integration of Lessons Learned from the H2020 Cluster Projects
by Simona D’Oca, Annarita Ferrante, Clara Ferrer, Roberta Pernetti, Anna Gralka, Rizal Sebastian and Peter Op ‘t Veld
Buildings 2018, 8(12), 174; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings8120174 - 6 Dec 2018
Cited by 92 | Viewed by 13120
Abstract
With a low rate of new building construction and an insufficient rate of existing building renovation, there is the need to step up the pace of building renovation with ambitious performance targets to achieve European Union (EU) climate change policies for 2050. However, [...] Read more.
With a low rate of new building construction and an insufficient rate of existing building renovation, there is the need to step up the pace of building renovation with ambitious performance targets to achieve European Union (EU) climate change policies for 2050. However, innovative technologies, including, but not limiting to, plug and play (PnP) prefabricated facades, information and communications technology (ICT)-support for building management systems (BMS), the integration of renewable energy systems (RES), building information model (BIM) and building performance simulation models (BPSM), advanced heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC), advanced geomatics, 3D-printing, and smart connectors, cannot alone solve the problem of low renovation rates of existing buildings in Europe that is hindering reaching of EU-wide targets. A workshop was held at the Sustainable Place Conference 2018 to present, with an integrative approach, the experiences from four H2020 innovation actions, i.e., 4RinEU, P2ENDURE, Pro-GET-OnE, and MORE-CONNECT, which were united by their central aims of improving building energy performance through deep renovation practices. This article presents the outcomes of the joint workshop and interactive discussion, by focusing on technical, financial, and social added values, barriers and challenges, in the context of the building renovation processes tackled by the four projects. Conclusive remarks converge on the identification of open questions to address future innovation opportunities, as well as some recommendations to be used at a policy level and/or in future implementation projects. Full article
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