Environmental and health related criteria for buildings - ANEC

IBO - Environmental and Health related Criteria for Buildings
- 20 % share of energy from renewable sources by 2020 20
The EU directive requires that all EU Member States endorse national plans and targets in
order to promote the uptake of close to zero-energy buildings. Member States shall ensure
that by 31 December 2020, all new buildings are nearly zero-energy buildings; and after 31
December 2018, new buildings occupied and owned by public authorities are nearly zeroenergy
buildings. Intermediate targets for improving the energy performance of new buildings
have to be implemented by 2015.
‘Nearly zero-energy buildings’ are not defined in detail in the recast of EPBD 2010 (apart
from “a building that has a very high energy performance” Article 2, paragraph 2) as national,
local and regional conditions differ. Indeed a great variety of high energy performance
building concepts are used throughout Europe.
Definition of “nearly zero-energy buildings”
a) Passive house
One of the first integrated concepts was the “Passivhaus” construction standard which has
been developed in Germany in the late 90ies of the last century. Its initiator Dr. Feist
(Passive House Institute Darmstadt) describes the concept as follows:
“The key components are excellent insulation and high airtightness of the thermal envelope
of a building, avoidance of thermal bridges and highly efficient heat recovery from exhaust
air. A conventional heating system is superfluous due to the combined use of internal and
solar heat gains. The passive house concept leads to the highest degree of comfort with
minimal energy consumption.” (IBO, Details for Passive Houses, 2009) The annual heating
requirement is limited to 15 kWh/m²a and the primary energy requirement to 120 kWh/m²a
(including heating, domestic hot water, ventilation, and all other electrical appliances).
A building envelope fulfilling the passive house standard is the ideal basis for a zero or plus
energy building.
Besides the definition of passive houses as highly insulated buildings without conventional
heating systems propagated in Central and Northern Europe, in the southern regions (e.g.
Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece) a passive house is defined as a building using passive
technologies to reduce especially the energy requirement during the summer period.
The following definitions of zero and energy positive houses are cited from the info note of
the EU commission “Low Energy Buildings in Europe: Current State of Play, Definitions and
Best Practice” (Brussels, 2009),
http://ec.europa.eu/energy/efficiency/doc/buildings/info_note.pdf
b) Zero energy houses / zero carbon houses
“The specificity of a zero energy house / zero carbon house is that the remaining energy
needs are entirely covered with renewable or carbon free energy sources. A house with zero
net energy consumption annually can be autonomous from the energy grid supply, but in
20 Renewable non-fossile energy sources are wind, solar, aerothermal, geothermal, hydrothermal and ocean
energy, hydropower, biomass, landfill gas, sewage treatment plant gas and biogases (Directive 2010/31/EU,
article 2, paragraph 6).
Final Report 55 31 03 2011