Integrating Environmental Sustainability in Construction and Real Estate Management Education

It is recommended to integrate specific management competencies in academic education to support the transition towards environmentally sustainable practices, particularly in the construction and real estate sector. This paper explores how architectural management education can integrate environmental sustainability within its current university...

On the effectiveness of passive controls for summer thermal comfort in highly insulated dwellings

Among environmental controls, solar shading and ventilative cooling are widely considered as key passive strategies for limiting the overheating risks in buildings. While their application is encouraged through Energy Performance of Buildings Directive regulations, several studies have shown that summer thermal comfort in heating-dominate...

Indoor Summer Thermal Comfort in a Changing Climate: The Case of a Nearly Zero Energy House in Wallonia (Belgium)

While the potential impact of climate change mitigation measures is well documented in building sciences literature, there are only relatively sparse studies focusing on the efficiency of adaptation strategies. This paper aims to contribute to this topic by evaluating the extent to which the design of a typical nearly Zero Energy Buildling (nZEB...

Business Model Development for Temporary Home Renovation Consultancy Centres: Experiences from European Pop-Ups

Local authorities (LAs) play an essential role in diffusing home energy renovation measures. However, there are rare business models developed for local authority actions. This paper aims to develop a critical review of the way that local authorities developed business models for pop-up centres where consultants can encourage home energy...

Building renovation at district level: Lessons learned from international case studies

Renovation at district scale is a key strategy to reduce CO2 emissions by optimising the implementation of renewable energy sources and taking advantage of economy of scale. This paper focuses on analysing good practice examples on energy renovations at district scale. The paper adapts a qualitative research methodology in four phases, including...

Experiences of consortia for scaling up nearly zero-energy renovations of single-family homes

On average 64 % of the dwellings in Europe are owner-occupied. Although there is an enormous potential to reduce their energy use and hence CO2 emissions, the current average renovation rate is just around 1,2 %. The development of one-stop-shops is expected to increase the market uptake of home renovation. Developing emerging frontrunner...

Activating the adoption of innovation: lessons from a passive house network

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore innovation adoption theory and to define a model to investigate operational activities and communication in innovation networks that can stimulate both supply and demand. It also aims to exemplify this model with the activities of an innovation network dedicated to promoting passive houses....

Supply-side collaboration for energy-efficient renovations

The supply side for nearly zero energy building (nZEB) renovation of owner-occupied single-family houses in Europe is suffering from a severe image problem of lack of knowledge and trust, inefficient construction processes, insufficient quality assurance and communication difficulties with home-owners. Research was done in Austria, Belgium,...

Defining nearly zero-energy housing in Belgium and the Netherlands

Europe expects the housing sector to evolve towards ‘nearly zero-energy’ dwellings. Meanwhile, general terms and research, marketing and legal definitions considering such dwellings have already been introduced. Appraisal of existing definitions is now needed for further policy development. This paper examines what nearly zero-energy terms can...

Passive house networks: A social innovation targeting innovation in SME's in the construction sector

This study examines opportunities for the emergence of SME networks regarding highly energy-efficient housing, as well as the barriers they face. A theoretical innovation diffusion model is developed from the point-of-view of social and environmental entrepreneurship and sustainable consumption. The qualitative analysis reflects key elements...

Passive house networks: A social innovation targeting innovation in SME's in the construction sector

This study examines opportunities for the emergence of SME networks regarding highly energy-efficient housing, as well as the barriers they face. A theoretical innovation diffusion model is developed from the point-of-view of social and environmental entrepreneurship and sustainable consumption. The qualitative analysis reflects key elements...

Challenges and opportunities of the passive house concept for retrofit

For newly built houses and renovations European and national ambitions prescribe increasing levels of energy performances, even including achieving the passive house standard, net zero energy or carbon neutral houses. For highly energy-efficient renovation, project information from first demonstration projects is now becoming available. This...

The impact of energy performance regulations on systems of building control

Innovative solutions in passive house details

For the realization of the first passive house demonstration projects in Belgium, passive houses were requested by convinced clients, designed by architects with experience in low energy building, and built by contractors with a feeling for working in building teams. These first passive house examples were not limited to one specific building...