Impact of building renovation on the decarbonized European energy system

Currently, there are optimization models that are able of modeling building renovation, but their scope is limited only to the heating system. There are also models that consider interactions between different energy subsystems, but they lack the ability to simulate building renovation. Having those two things combined would be beneficial as the...

The role of LCA in the renovation's early decision-making for the design of a multifunctional, modular building envelope system

The renovation of buildings has a high capacity to influence the environmental impacts and global objectives of climate change mitigation. In the context of designing low-energy buildings with minimized environmental impacts, the life cycle assessment (LCA) has been proven a straightforward method, to evaluate the direct and indirect...

Renovation process challenges and barriers: Addressing the communication and coordination bottlenecks in the zero-energy building renovation workflow in European residential buildings

The implementation of Nearly Zero-Energy Buildings (NZEB) renovation packages in Europe needs to be accelerated to meet the current decarbonization goals. To achieve this level of performance, building renovation strategies should shift towards solutions that incorporate a multitude of passive and active components, increasing the complexity...

Living at Gele Scheikunde: How to redevelop former campus buildings by integrating social & ecological values?

This research looks at Gele Scheikunde - a TU Delft chemistry department building constructed in 1945. The complex served for educational purposes until 2012 and then was sold by TU for redevelopment.<br/>The ambition of the city of Delft is to increase the housing stock, furthermore, the number of TU campus users has grown significantly in...

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...

From gas to geothermal energy: Adaptations at building level for a lower temperature in the heating network

The transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources brings along the reduction of the supply temperature of the distribution heating networks, because renewable energy sources usually provide heat at lower temperatures. This master thesis specifically focuses on the buildings because it is uncertain which adaptations are necessary to...

Influences in transformation projects: An investigation into the factors that influence the performances of a transformation process of building projects

Design optimization of Dutch single-family houses taking into account energy flexibility

This thesis aims at analyzing the energy flexibility (EF) potential of building structural thermal energy storage (STES) by the implementation of active demand response (ADR) and providing a representative recommendation for building renovation and operation. The objective building type is existing Dutch single-family houses built between 1965...

Stakeholders View on Commercial Benefits for Energy Neutral Refurbishment of Let Properties

In Europe, the DIRECTIVE 2010/31/EU requires increasing the number of nearly zero energy buildings. The existing building stock needs to be included in order to achieve the 2020 EU environmental targets. The main barriers of energy neutral refurbishment of existing non-residential buildings appear to be financial rather than technical, next to a...

Designing for residents: Building monitoring and co-creation in social housing renovation in the Netherlands

Large differences between the expected and actual energy consumption have been found in energy efficient dwellings. Research has shown that these differences are partially caused by occupant behaviour. The financing and payback periods of low carbon technologies are often uncertain because of the impact of the occupants on building...

Integration of Energy and Material Performance of Buildings: I=E+M

A new methodology is proposed to assess integral performance of building with respect to energy and materials requirement over the building life cycle. Because the method builds on existing methods for Energy Performance and Materials Performance of Buildings, as defined by Dutch National Building Code, it provides an easily applicable method...

Building renovation as an element for the sustainability of the Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil

Among the diverse initiatives that can be developed in the search of sustainability, universities assume important roles either by disseminating ideas or by implementing real world solutions and applications. Considered as durable products, buildings represent one of the biggest elements in our society that causes impact in the natural ambient....