Scenario Analyses Concerning Energy Efficiency and Climate Protection in Regional and National Residential Building Stocks. Examples from Nine European Countries. - EPISCOPE Synthesis Report No. 3

This report documents methodological aspects and selected results of the scenario analyses to assess refurbishment as well as energy saving processes and project future energy consumption.. It covers scenario calculations conducted for regional residential building stocks in Salzburg/Austria, the Comunidat Valenciana/Spain, the Piedmont Region/Italy, the national non-profit housing stock in the Netherlands as well as the national residential building stocks in Germany, England, Greece, Norway, and Slovenia. Thereby, the objective of the scenario analysis is not a prediction of future energy demand in the respective building stock. Rather, the objective is to show the potential future impact of predefined assumptions. This may help respective key actors and policy makers to decide on strategies and policies for transforming building stocks towards carbon dioxide neutrality

Tracking of Energy Performance Indicators in Residential Building Stocks – Different Approaches and Common Results - EPISCOPE Synthesis Report No. 4

A central task of IEE EPISCOPE project was to carry out energy balance calculations and scenario analysis for national, regional or local residential building stocks against the background of energy saving and climate protection targets. The EPISCOPE Synthesis Report No. 4 documents the individual approaches of collecting information for the investigated residential building stocks as a foundation for building stock models and scenario calculations. Issues related to the availability of data and data quality are discussed, and concepts for a continuous monitoring (a regular data collection) are presented as a basis for a future tracking of energy performance in the observed building stocks

Primary Energy Factors for Electricity Production in Europe

The European Union (EU) has committed to supporting the United Nations’ efforts in line with the Paris Agreement for addressing climate change and has set ambitious targets to reduce primary energy consumption and emissions. Similar commitments have also been set by EU-27 member states. For this purpose, it is necessary to use a primary energy factor (PEF) for converting electricity use to primary energy units and for assessing energy conservation measures. Lower PEFs reflect efficiency improvements in power generation, an increased share of renewable energy sources in the fuel mix for electricity generation, and lower transmission and distribution losses. Over the past decades, there have been intensive efforts and notable progress in the EU-27 for increasing the use of renewables in the energy mix for electricity generation. However, the EU default PEF value for electricity was not regularly updated and remained at 2.5 for several years till it was finally recalculated at 2.1 in the 2018 recast of the Energy Efficiency Directive. This paper reviews different calculation options for estimating the PEF for electricity from official annual statistics, presents the historical evolution of the calculated conversion factors, and provides simple linear correlations for projecting the PEF values that can be used to facilitate more-realistic forward-looking calculations and assess national energy efficiency, climate change, or decarbonization plans in EU-27 member states. A more detailed analysis and case studies on the impacts of this work are illustrated for Greece and Poland

Energy Use Intensities for Asset Rating of Hellenic Non-Residential Buildings

 This work present the results from an in-depth analysis of data from about 120,000 energy performance certificates in order to gain a better understanding of the energy use and carbon emissions of non-residential (NR) buildings in Greece. The analysis is performed for all different building uses, construction periods and Hellenic climate zones. This is a first step for generating new knowledge about the NR building stock in Greece and deriving compatible energy asset metrics that can be used for assessing NR buildings independent from their operation and occupancy. The mean (median in parenthesis) primary energy use intensity is 539.5 (442.6) kWh/m2 and emissions reach 170.0 (141.4) kgCO2/m2. The derived energy baselines reveal that indoor sports halls/swimming pools are the most energy intensive facilities, while schools have the lowest energy use, due to their operational patterns. Lighting is the most energy consuming service, followed by cooling, space heating and a very low domestic hot water use

Benchmarks for Embodied and Operational Energy Assessment of Hellenic Single-Family Houses

Building energy performance benchmarking increases awareness and enables stakeholders to make better informed decisions for designing, operating, and renovating sustainable buildings. In the era of nearly zero energy buildings, the embodied energy along with operational energy use are essential for evaluating the environmental impacts and building performance throughout their lifecycle. Key metrics and baselines for the embodied energy intensity in representative Hellenic houses are presented in this paper. The method is set up to progressively cover all types of buildings. The lifecycle analysis was performed using the well-established SimaPro software package and the EcoInvent lifecycle inventory database, complemented with national data from short energy audits carried out in Greece. The operational energy intensity was estimated using the national calculation engine for assessing the building’s energy performance and the predictions were adapted to obtain more realistic estimates. The sensitivity analysis for different type of buildings considered 16 case studies, accounting for representative construction practices, locations (climate conditions), system efficiencies, renovation practices, and lifetime of buildings. The results were used to quantify the relative significance of operational and embodied energy, and to estimate the energy recovery time for popular energy conservation and energy efficiency measures. The derived indicators reaffirm the importance of embodied energy in construction materials and systems for new high performing buildings and for renovating existing buildings to nearly zero energy

Baselines for Energy Use and Carbon Emission Intensities in Hellenic Nonresidential Buildings

This work exploits data from 30,000 energy performance certificates of whole nonresidential (NR) buildings in Greece. The available information is analyzed for 30 different NR building uses (e.g., hotels, schools, sports facilities, hospitals, retails, offices) and four main services (space heating, space cooling, domestic hot water and lighting). Data are screened in order to exclude outliers and checked for consistency with the Hellenic NR building stock. The average energy use and CO2 emission intensities for all building uses are calculated, as well as the respective energy ratings in order to gain a better understanding of the NR sector. Finally, in an attempt to determine whether these values are representative for the various Hellenic NR building uses, their temporal evolution is investigated. The average primary energy use intensity is 448.0 kWh/m2 for all NR buildings, while the CO2 emissions reach 147.5 kgCO2/m2. The derived energy baselines reveal that indoor sports halls/swimming pools have the highest energy use, while private cram schools/conservatories have the lowest, due to their operational patterns. Generally, from the four services taken into account, lighting is the most energy consuming, followed by cooling, heating and finally domestic hot water. For a total of 11 building uses, more data from the certificates will be necessary for deriving representative baselines, but, when it comes to buildings categories, more data are required

Climate Change Scenarios and Their Implications on the Energy Performance of Hellenic Non-Residential Buildings

It is important to understand how the climate is changing in order to prepare for the future, adapt if necessary, and, most importantly, take proper precautionary measures to alleviate major negative impacts. This work investigates the potential impacts of climate change on the anticipated energy performance of the existing Hellenic building stock until the end of the century. The assessment considers average climatic projections for two future time periods, one for the near and one for the distant future, following two representative concentration pathways (RCPs). The first one is a baseline scenario (RCP8.5) representing the highest greenhouse gas emissions. The second is an intermediate stabilization scenario (RCP4.5), assuming the imposition of conservative emissions mitigation policies. The future climate data are generated for 62 cities throughout Greece. As a case study, the work focuses on Hellenic non-residential (NR) whole buildings, analyzing available data collected during about 2500 energy audits of real NR buildings. The available data are used to assess the buildings’ heating and cooling demand and energy use. The annual average air temperature for Greece in 2050 is projected to increase by 1.5 K for the RCP4.5 scenario and by 1.9 K for the RCP8.5 scenario. In 2090, the increase is estimated to reach 1.7 K and 4.2 K, respectively. Accordingly, if the existing NR buildings are not renovated, the average heating energy use is expected to decrease by 22–26% in 2050 and by 23–52% in 2090. On the other hand, the average cooling energy use is expected to increase by 24–30% in 2050 and by 28–66% in 2090