In Colombia, Builders and Architects believe that using the energy efficient solutions and strategies in their design will increase its cost. Based on your experiences, how we can increase the awareness of builders and architects toward the energy used in buildings?
There are two basic things, in my opinion: the orientation of the building and its compactness. And they don't increase costs. All other technological issues (solar pannels, geothermic energy, intelligent windows...) could be important, also, but not so much.
Adapting bioclimatic design strategies especially daylighting and natural ventilation.
Orientation of building can enhance ventilation and day lighting inside building but most of the time due to space constraint and other issues it is not possible to do so. Still we can play with placing different rooms base on their usability to maximize the use of natural ventilation and day lighting.
Also choose the building materials(external façade) and glazing on external façade wisely because these are main factors that affect the building thermal performance( heat loss and gain and associated parameter such as thermal comfort) on long run.
Look at the bigger picture, sustainable design, as energy saving in itself is only a means to an end. What I find helpful is to ask yourself: how did we get here and how can we redirect.
The irony is that (traditional) sustainable building originated exactly from energy and resource scarceness. Thus cost saving: orientation of building openings towards the sun date way back to ancient history and was even formalized in the Codex Justinianus 5th century AD and the use of local materials was simply an economical must.
Then the game changed: energy became very cheap (animal to oil) and labor costs (slaves to unions) rose dramatically. Absolute reading tip: “In the Servitude of Power: Energy and Civilization Through the Ages” by the French researchers Debeir, Deleage, Hemery.
So our variables are extremely simple: energy, material, process and performance.
Energy: the urgency of possible oil shortage is for most people a far too abstract concept to deal with in everyday life. Although the popularity of books like Leggett’s “ The Energy of Nations” suggest growing concern and Putin is doing a good job too in Europe. So for some clients you can use this argument to convince extra investments.
Materials. Price (energy embedded in transport and production costs), governmental regulations and stimulations and performance is the playing field and will differ per country and continent. Performance is the only domain we as designers have some influence on. Sustainable materials are often biodegradable and bad design over many years have given them unjustly a bad reputation. There are no bad materials only bad design and our schools can be blamed. If you search well there are many best practices and a lot of traditional knowledge to be found that can convince clients otherwise. For example wood if designed and detailed properly doesn’t have to be painted!
Process: the chain from design to delivery has – in the West at least – become very long with far too many specialists. Change brings fear in the chain and the price rockets. The challenge here is integration and the problem organization. With these, a radical mindset change, sustainable building could easily replace regular building practice.
Performance: every decent HVAC engineer will admit that installations are remedy for bad design decisions. A good building needs nearly no installations, even in high end buildings. See Baumschlager Eberle’s own office in Lustenau, Austria. The problem is you need high tech knowledge to prove that low tech solutions and bio-materials can outperform regular solutions. (my private studio is involved in research on the integral design of a greenhouse housing system and the results and interaction of solutions are sometimes very surprising). This is very costly if you have to do this for every design. What the sustainable building industry desperately lacks is one or two powerful collective institutions (like in the steel and concrete industry) initiating, organizing, distributing and standardizing instead of the dozens fragmented clusters of self-interest groups the sustainable industry and researchworld is now littered with.
My rational conclusion is that in time sustainable design will certainly replace current practice but the speed of the transformation will depend on the above conditions. We as designers can only influence a limited number of these factors –but even then you can be surprised how far you can get with only that today.
I have little to add to the very good answer of my before-speaker.
Indeed, I think that looking at the original question - which is about energy efficiency - we have to answer one thing (as done by the first answers), when talking about sustainability - which includes energy efficiency as part of resource efficiency - we have to answer in another manner.
Briefly I would like to do both: as to efficiently optimize energy efficiency (and I talk about costs in time and money) it is surely the orientation and the openings that have to be thought about. As they are normally decisions taken in an early design stage, their effect is automatically more efficient than - later taken - detail or technical decisions.
As for efficient sustainable construction results, it is very difficult to answer without defining the weights attributed to the different pillars and criteria. Therefore, I personally try not to give generalised answers.
Best regards,
Lennart
Buildings should be designed first to be comfortable and healthy. Energy efficient design is the design that provides this comfort at the lowest energy cost, and vary efficient buildings use only renewable energy to provide a comfortable indoor environment.
A simple design priciple to achieve energy efficiency is to go as far as reasonably possible with passive design, i.e. to apply architerctural and constructive measures that improves indoor environment quality at no energy cost. Some of these measures were already mentioned :
- Thermal insulation protects form extreme outdoor temperatures,
- Compacity makes thermla insulation easier
- Thermal inertia stabilises the indoor temperature and allows efficient passive solar heating or natural ventilation cooling
- Well placed openings improves daylighting and allows controlled natural ventilation
- An orientation that is adapted to the climate allows the use of breezes for cooling or ventilating or, at the contrary, protects from harsh winds
The cost of these measures is very small or even zero when applied with reason and appropriately. There need however more careful design and this deserves some fee!
The passive measures are not only cheap, but the local environment (sun, wind, temperature) provides their energy needs, and they never fail. However, they are difficult to control and depend on the weather.
Active measures (e.g. HVAC) are expensive, need expesinve energy and may fail, However, they are easy to control and do not depend on the weather.
We see that passive and active measures are complementary. But since the passive ones are cheaper and sustainable, it is adviseable to apply them first, as far as reaqasonably possible, and, if necessary, use active measures to ensure comfort all the time.
A survey within anEuropean research project has shown that buldings designed that way are not only enegy efficeitn, but also comfortable and healthy (see file)
Insulate your home. Adding new or additional insulation to your ceilings, attic and walls along with using caulking or weather stripping to make sure doors and windows are properly sealed will prevent cold drafts and air leaks to keep warm air inside during the freezing winter. When the weather heats up, these same improvements will help trap the cool air from air conditioning inside your home during the sweltering summer.
Replace aluminum frames. Aluminum window frames let heat transfer very easily. Vinyl frames are much more resistant to heat transfer.
Get multiple panes. Double- or triple-paned argon gas-filled windows are great for keeping the heat in and the cold out (the argon between the glass acts as an incredibly effective insulator).
Tint your windows. While you may not think that tinted windows on the front of your house looks very attractive, you can always do it to the back windows. It's surprising how much unwanted heat and cold you can keep out by having tinted windows.
Open the blinds. Why not leave the lights off and let some sun in? Lighting your house with sunlight is 100% free!
Energy Star-rated replacement windows is the most energy-efficient and cost-effective option.
By making lots of research through this topic in order to encourage governments and communities about it.
Conference Paper Ambassadors of Sustainability: An Analytical Study of Global...
Walaa A. Yakoub Your paper’s foundation lies in the importance of cities. It’s an interpolation of today’s developments into the future.
But could that not be the core of the problem?
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”,
Albert Einstein’s famous quote is quite clear... If cities are the results of yesterday’s thinking, why should they automatically be the product of tomorrow's vision of the world?. Yet the paper and millions of others likewise never challenge this presumption.
What if cities are NOT the blueprint for the future of living?
Without going into detail, as an engineer trained in logic, I can produce dozens of very good reasons why they may NOT be our future. Your paper mentions an important one: resilience…
It’s clear that the transition to the eco-socio-economy will change the dynamics of society. As a result, it will also change her spatial organisation. So the big question is: how will those dynamics look like.
I am a big fan of Ian McHarg theory of creative fitting* so my guess/hope would be on sustainable bioregions** organised in an Economy for the Common Good***.
Therefore I am extremely glad young people are no longer waiting for politicians to wake up but are actively taking their future into their own hands and are shaping it! > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UaHip9P1tQ&feature=share
* Ian McHarg’s lecture Dwelling in Nature: Conversations with Students on https://soundcloud.com/vanhoesenj/creativefitting full text of this lecture: https://issuu.com/papress/docs/ian-mcharg
** John Thackera Bioregioning
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405872619300012
*** Economy for the Common Good https://www.ecogood.org/
Christian Felber’s book is a must-read: Change Everything: Creating an Economy for the Common Good. The ultimate step: Ulrike Guérot's Republic of Bioregions.
Dear Rolando Arturo Cubillos González
There are many ways to improve the energy efficiency of a building. I have created a list of some of the most socialized scientific contributions this year, on this subject. I hope this information will be of great use to you.
- Academic stars and Energy Stars, an assessment of student academic achievement and school building energy efficiency.
- Economic efficiency and carbon emissions in multi-energy systems with flexible buildings
- Assessing the relevance of barriers to energy efficiency implementation in the building and transport sectors in eight European countries
- Energy efficiency of latent heat storage systems in residential buildings: Coupled effects of wall assembly and climatic conditions
- A review of deterministic and data-driven methods to quantify energy efficiency savings and to predict retrofitting scenarios in buildings
- A methodology to improve energy efficiency and comfort conditions with low-cost ICTs in rural public buildings
- Improving energy efficiency of commercial buildings by Combined Heat Cooling and Power plants
- · Restoration of a historic building in order to improve energy efficiency and energy saving-Case study-The dining room within the Žiča monastery property
- Combined effect of outdoor microclimate boundary conditions on air conditioning system's efficiency and building energy demand in net zero energy settlements
- Detailed energy efficiency strategies for converting an existing office building to NZEB: a case study in the Pacific Northwest
- Model predictive control with adaptive machine-learning-based model for building energy efficiency and comfort optimization
- Transforming Romanian school buildings in prosumers. An opportunity for increasing the energy efficiency in electrical networks and reducing the environmental impact of the power distribution sector
- Optimal design of timber-glass upgrade modules for vertical building extension from the viewpoints of energy efficiency and visual comfort
- Methodology for Energy Efficiency on Lighting and Air Conditioning Systems in Buildings Using a Multi-Objective Optimization Algorithm
- Dynamic thermal performance of ultra-light and thermal-insulative aerogel foamed concrete for building energy efficiency
- A novel economic structure to improve the energy label in smart residential buildings under energy efficiency programs
- Predicting energy consumption in multiple buildings using machine learning for improving energy efficiency and sustainability
- Climate adaptation of listed buildings: An interaction between design, regulations and energy efficiency
- Atrium energy efficiency design based on dimensionless index parameters for office building in severe cold region of China
- Operational risks and building energy efficiency
- Enhancing building energy efficiency by adaptive façade: A computational optimization approach
- Life-cycle approach to the estimation of energy efficiency measures in the buildings sector
- Performance-rating-based approach to formulate a new envelope index for commercial buildings in perspective of energy efficiency and thermal comfort
- Energy efficiency of novel interior surface layer with improved thermal characteristics and its effect on hygrothermal performance of contemporary building envelopes
- 3D spatial reuse of multi-millimeter-wave spectra by ultra-dense in-building small cells for spectral and energy efficiencies of future 6G mobile networks
To increase awareness I believe it should be done in the formation of the professional. In my classes, focused on a bioclimatic design I assign small tasks to my students such as calculate your ecological footprint in a way that gets to know how daily activities affect energy consumption in more levels than we recognized. The experiments have turned pretty well as they have gained more consciousness in the matter. Sustainability can be achieve with an understanding of the environment the city is settled on and the relation it has with the human comfort, by understanding this relation the architect can choose which simple passive strategies can be applied in order to improve the energy performance of the building
Hi dear Rolando.
Thanks for the important discussion and question you raised.
The importance of optimizing energy consumption in buildings
As you know, energy consumption in homes, offices, commercial and industrial centers is very expensive. Therefore, one of the most important goals of engineering and construction supervision of buildings, especially in recent years, is to optimize energy consumption in the building and obtain solutions for this work. There are various methods to optimize energy consumption in the building, before which the need for optimization must first be recognized to better understand and implement its solutions.
The need to optimize energy consumption in the building
Perhaps the first and most important parameter in optimizing energy consumption in a building is the huge cost that is paid annually in each country for energy production or import. On the other hand, energy sources are not eternal and are finite, so if we consume only energy, regardless of energy optimization in the building, it is almost exhausted and the consequences are very severe and can even lead to loss of life. So now, every new place that is built must be optimized in terms of energy consumption, so that we can reduce energy consumption and be able to control it. Fortunately, with the research that has been done, there are many ways to optimize energy.
Optimization of energy consumption in buildings
- Although optimization increases the price of materials, but in the long run, they are very economical due to the annual reduction of energy.
- This will increase the efficiency of the devices.
- Prevents the loss of heat and cold produced by the systems.
- Reduces the overall load of the building and the destructive force of the earthquake.
- Will improve the shaping of the building skeleton.
Set up building automation or BAS systems to optimize building energy consumption
The automation devices in the building, known as BAS, must be constantly adjusted to optimize energy consumption. In fact, people in the building may not have a problem with heat or cold and do not pay attention to automation, but this is wrong and takes energy consumption out of control. In fact, if the system is well managed and adjusted, it will reduce energy consumption in the system by at least 30%.
Energy efficiency solutions in BAS automation system:
- Precise timing to turn the system on and off.
- Control the energy consumption of the system.
- Adjust cold and hot levels.
- Variable air volume control.
- Choosing the right cooler.
- Proper adjustment of cold water, hot water and condenser.
What problems increase energy consumption in buildings with BAS system?
Some not only do not help to optimize energy consumption but also increase it, such as:
- Insufficient monitoring of system performance.
- Improper programming of the device by its installer.
- Failure to use BAS controller parts by industrial facility technicians.
- Do not replace damaged parts of the system.
- Lack of proper knowledge of the system operator about how and the importance of energy conservation and optimization.
Increase awareness of energy
One of the problems that causes people to not pay attention to the optimization of energy consumption in the building and issues such as the use of optimal air conditioners, is their lack of awareness. This requires culture-building in the community, so that people themselves are encouraged to do so. This is usually the job of organizations such as radio and television, education and other cultural organizations, which have a great impact on saving and optimizing energy.
- Badges
- Science method
- Similar topics
- Mathematics
- Statistics
- Statistical Techniques
- Meta-Analysis