International Review of Applied Sciences and Engineering, Dec 1, 2013
The recast of the Energy Performance Building Directive contains a new article about the need to ... more The recast of the Energy Performance Building Directive contains a new article about the need to increase the number of buildings which go beyond current national requirements, and to draw up national plans for increasing the number of nearly zero-energy buildings (nZEB) with the final target that by 2020 all new buildings shall be nearly-zero energy. Nearly zero-energy buildings are buildings with a very high energy performance, where the remaining low energy demand can be supplied to a significant extent by renewable energy. In this paper, a detached house complying with the proposed Hungarian nZEB requirements is analysed. The life cycle cost and life cycle environmental impacts of the building are assessed for various building service systems to optimise the building design.
Occupant behaviour is a field, that has always been of great interest to researchers. It could si... more Occupant behaviour is a field, that has always been of great interest to researchers. It could significantly modify the operation of the building and the user’s energy needs, and it is also difficult to model it according to reality. Evaluation of measurements is a crucial step to calibrate dynamic simulations. Our goal was to analyse the indoor comfort conditions according to measurements, particularly in summertime, and find what solution closes the performance gap between the measured and simulated results. In this research, we investigated an apartment building that underwent an energy efficiency renovation. We have installed a weather station and monitoring sensors in selected apartments, with which we monitored the temperature, relative humidity, and CO2 values of certain rooms, the presence of the inhabitants and the window opening and the operation of shading. In this paper, we focus on the monitoring and simulation results of the topmost apartment. The results can help us b...
IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly being used as a tool by the building industry and act... more Life cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly being used as a tool by the building industry and actors to assess the global warming potential (GWP) of building activities. In several countries, life cycle based requirements on GWP are currently being incorporated into building regulations. After the establishment of general calculation rules for building LCA, a crucial next step is to evaluate the performance of the specific building design. For this, reference values or benchmarks are needed, but there are several approaches to defining these. This study presents an overview of existing benchmark systems documented in seventeen cases from the IEA EBC Annex 72 project on LCA of buildings. The study characterizes their different types of methodological background and displays the reported values. Full life cycle target values for residential and non-residential buildings are found around 10-20 kg CO2e/m2/y, whereas reference values are found between 20-80 kg CO2e/m2/y. Possible embodie...
IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 2020
Introduction: The international research project IEA EBC Annex 72 investigates the life cycle rel... more Introduction: The international research project IEA EBC Annex 72 investigates the life cycle related environmental impacts caused by buildings. The project aims inter alia to harmonise LCA approaches on buildings. Methods: To identify major commonalities and discrepancies among national LCA approaches, reference buildings were defined to present and compare the national approaches. A residential high-rise building located in Tianjin, China, was selected as one of the reference buildings. The main construction elements are reinforced concrete shear walls, beams and floor slabs. The building has an energy reference area of 4566 m2 and an operational heating energy demand of 250 MJ/m2a. An expert team provided information on the quantities of building materials and elements required for the construction, established a BIM model and quantified the operational energy demand. Results: The greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impacts of the building were quantified using 17 country-...
IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 2019
In recent years the application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for assessing and improving the en... more In recent years the application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for assessing and improving the environmental performance of buildings has increased. At the same time, the automated optimization of building designs is gaining attraction for both design and research purposes. In this regard, a number of issues persist when aiming to optimize building’s environmental impacts along the design process. Firstly, as LCA applies a life cycle perspective, many aspects have to be considered (e.g. energy demand in operation as well as consumption of resources and energy for production and end of life treatment) and a variety of specific calculations is needed (e.g. building energy performance simulation, material quantity take-off). Secondly, sophisticated software packages are available and being used for each of these calculations (e.g. software for building modelling, dynamic energy simulation, quantity surveying). Though many of these software packages are currently standalone applications...
IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 2019
Sudan suffers from hard summers with temperatures approaching 42 0C in the South and 48 0C in the... more Sudan suffers from hard summers with temperatures approaching 42 0C in the South and 48 0C in the North. In spite of that, the technical solutions in buildings for protection against solar radiation and natural ventilation are generally beyond reach. There isn’t sufficient information provided on the characteristics of the building stock, building physics and energy use of buildings in Sudan. The main objective of this research paper is to collect the data from the population and housing census, scientific research papers and different reports, and to use these in preparing a building typology table. The climate in Sudan is divided into three zones: warm desert climate, warm semi-arid climate, and tropical savanna climate zone. The building varies according to the climate zones, geographical feature, and urbanization levels. Building materials range from natural ones like straw, wood, and mud to moderns one like bricks and concrete. Building typology varies from structures to provid...
Architects and designers have a critical role in promoting Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), a scienti... more Architects and designers have a critical role in promoting Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), a scientific methodology for evaluating the environmental impacts of buildings that can help decarbonise the built environment and minimise other negative effects.This paper presents the results of an international survey conducted among design professionals as part of the IEA Annex 72 project about assessing life cycle related environmental impacts caused by buildings. Twenty-three countries were participating in the survey altogether, but in this paper, only the specific situation in two Central European countries, Hungary and Czechia, are presented. The questionnaire explored the designers’ understanding of environmental problems and LCA methodology, the drivers and barriers of environmental assessment and the future perspectives.The results show that many architects and designers are concerned about environmental problems and the built environment’s contribution but have a limited understandi...
With the climate change we are experiencing today, the number and intensity of heatwaves are incr... more With the climate change we are experiencing today, the number and intensity of heatwaves are increasing dramatically, significantly impacting our buildings’ overheating. The majority of the prefabricated concrete panel buildings in Hungary are considered outdated from an energy point of view. These buildings may be at greater risk from extreme weather events. To examine this, long-term monitoring measurements are needed. Therefore, we developed a unique, reliable, and cost-effective wireless monitoring system, which can track in real time the indoor air quality data (temperature, relative humidity, CO2) of the investigated apartment building, as well as users’ habits, such as resident presence, window opening, and blind movement. The data were used to analyse and quantify the summer overheating of the dwelling and user habits. The measurements showed that the average temperature in all rooms was above 26 °C, and there were several occasions when the temperature exceeded 30 °C. Overh...
2016. január 1-én lépett életbe az épületek energetikai jellemzőinek meghatározásáról szóló 7/200... more 2016. január 1-én lépett életbe az épületek energetikai jellemzőinek meghatározásáról szóló 7/2006 (V. 24.) TNM rendelet, illetve az épületek tanúsításáról szóló 176/2008. (VI.30.) Korm. rendelet legújabb módosítása. A rendelettervezeteket 2015-ben több szakmai szerv is véleményezte, az alapvető ellentmondásokat és problémákat jelezték az illetékes minisztérium számára. 2015 végén több, a témában jártas szakember összefogásával nyílt levélben fordultunk a helyettes államtitkárhoz, amelyben a legkritikusabb kérdéseket pontokba szedtük. A levél a Magyar Épületgépészet c. folyóiratban is megjelent. A tervezett rendelet végül jelentős változtatások és a kritikákra adott érdemi válaszok nélkül életbe lépett. Jelen formájában a rendelet több kisebb és több nagyobb sebből vérzik. Ezek részben már most is félreértésekre adnak okot, de jó részük csak akkor válik majd nyilvánvalóvá, amikor a közel nulla energiaigényű épületek követelményét egyre többen alkalmazzák majd. Elsősorban a megújuló ...
Life CycleAssessment is a more and more widely used method for the environmental evaluation of bu... more Life CycleAssessment is a more and more widely used method for the environmental evaluation of buildings. In this paper, we present a modular methodology for the environmental assessment and optimisation of buildings. The methodology is implemented in a parametric design tool where the building geometry can be modelled in 3D, then the energy performance is determined with the energy calculation module and the environmental impact is calculated with the LCA module. The life cycle impact minimization is possible through the optimization module.The method is demonstrated on a case study of a typical model of a house described by a typology of the Hungarian building stock.We present the application of the method for both new building design and energy retrofitting. Such typological assessments facilitate the further modelling of a complete building stock (e.g. residential buildings), and with the help of optimization tools, the potential for environmental impact mitigation of the housin...
For environmental accounting of buildings Life Cycle Assessment is a proper and more and more wid... more For environmental accounting of buildings Life Cycle Assessment is a proper and more and more widespread method.The assessment of the embodied materials iswell covered by constantly improving databases (Life Cycle Inventories). On the other hand, calculation methods for the operation phase of the buildings vary in the literature. Specifically the calculation of the environmental impact related to the use of the energy source raise important questions. Our results show that in many cases the energy source has the most significant influence on the environmental impact of a building. The consideration of future change in the electricity production mix is a key aspect in the modelling of the environmental impacts. In this paper, we present a method for determining the future electricity production in Hungary and we investigate its influence on the specific environmental impacts
International Review of Applied Sciences and Engineering, Dec 1, 2013
The recast of the Energy Performance Building Directive contains a new article about the need to ... more The recast of the Energy Performance Building Directive contains a new article about the need to increase the number of buildings which go beyond current national requirements, and to draw up national plans for increasing the number of nearly zero-energy buildings (nZEB) with the final target that by 2020 all new buildings shall be nearly-zero energy. Nearly zero-energy buildings are buildings with a very high energy performance, where the remaining low energy demand can be supplied to a significant extent by renewable energy. In this paper, a detached house complying with the proposed Hungarian nZEB requirements is analysed. The life cycle cost and life cycle environmental impacts of the building are assessed for various building service systems to optimise the building design.
Occupant behaviour is a field, that has always been of great interest to researchers. It could si... more Occupant behaviour is a field, that has always been of great interest to researchers. It could significantly modify the operation of the building and the user’s energy needs, and it is also difficult to model it according to reality. Evaluation of measurements is a crucial step to calibrate dynamic simulations. Our goal was to analyse the indoor comfort conditions according to measurements, particularly in summertime, and find what solution closes the performance gap between the measured and simulated results. In this research, we investigated an apartment building that underwent an energy efficiency renovation. We have installed a weather station and monitoring sensors in selected apartments, with which we monitored the temperature, relative humidity, and CO2 values of certain rooms, the presence of the inhabitants and the window opening and the operation of shading. In this paper, we focus on the monitoring and simulation results of the topmost apartment. The results can help us b...
IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly being used as a tool by the building industry and act... more Life cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly being used as a tool by the building industry and actors to assess the global warming potential (GWP) of building activities. In several countries, life cycle based requirements on GWP are currently being incorporated into building regulations. After the establishment of general calculation rules for building LCA, a crucial next step is to evaluate the performance of the specific building design. For this, reference values or benchmarks are needed, but there are several approaches to defining these. This study presents an overview of existing benchmark systems documented in seventeen cases from the IEA EBC Annex 72 project on LCA of buildings. The study characterizes their different types of methodological background and displays the reported values. Full life cycle target values for residential and non-residential buildings are found around 10-20 kg CO2e/m2/y, whereas reference values are found between 20-80 kg CO2e/m2/y. Possible embodie...
IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 2020
Introduction: The international research project IEA EBC Annex 72 investigates the life cycle rel... more Introduction: The international research project IEA EBC Annex 72 investigates the life cycle related environmental impacts caused by buildings. The project aims inter alia to harmonise LCA approaches on buildings. Methods: To identify major commonalities and discrepancies among national LCA approaches, reference buildings were defined to present and compare the national approaches. A residential high-rise building located in Tianjin, China, was selected as one of the reference buildings. The main construction elements are reinforced concrete shear walls, beams and floor slabs. The building has an energy reference area of 4566 m2 and an operational heating energy demand of 250 MJ/m2a. An expert team provided information on the quantities of building materials and elements required for the construction, established a BIM model and quantified the operational energy demand. Results: The greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impacts of the building were quantified using 17 country-...
IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 2019
In recent years the application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for assessing and improving the en... more In recent years the application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for assessing and improving the environmental performance of buildings has increased. At the same time, the automated optimization of building designs is gaining attraction for both design and research purposes. In this regard, a number of issues persist when aiming to optimize building’s environmental impacts along the design process. Firstly, as LCA applies a life cycle perspective, many aspects have to be considered (e.g. energy demand in operation as well as consumption of resources and energy for production and end of life treatment) and a variety of specific calculations is needed (e.g. building energy performance simulation, material quantity take-off). Secondly, sophisticated software packages are available and being used for each of these calculations (e.g. software for building modelling, dynamic energy simulation, quantity surveying). Though many of these software packages are currently standalone applications...
IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 2019
Sudan suffers from hard summers with temperatures approaching 42 0C in the South and 48 0C in the... more Sudan suffers from hard summers with temperatures approaching 42 0C in the South and 48 0C in the North. In spite of that, the technical solutions in buildings for protection against solar radiation and natural ventilation are generally beyond reach. There isn’t sufficient information provided on the characteristics of the building stock, building physics and energy use of buildings in Sudan. The main objective of this research paper is to collect the data from the population and housing census, scientific research papers and different reports, and to use these in preparing a building typology table. The climate in Sudan is divided into three zones: warm desert climate, warm semi-arid climate, and tropical savanna climate zone. The building varies according to the climate zones, geographical feature, and urbanization levels. Building materials range from natural ones like straw, wood, and mud to moderns one like bricks and concrete. Building typology varies from structures to provid...
Architects and designers have a critical role in promoting Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), a scienti... more Architects and designers have a critical role in promoting Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), a scientific methodology for evaluating the environmental impacts of buildings that can help decarbonise the built environment and minimise other negative effects.This paper presents the results of an international survey conducted among design professionals as part of the IEA Annex 72 project about assessing life cycle related environmental impacts caused by buildings. Twenty-three countries were participating in the survey altogether, but in this paper, only the specific situation in two Central European countries, Hungary and Czechia, are presented. The questionnaire explored the designers’ understanding of environmental problems and LCA methodology, the drivers and barriers of environmental assessment and the future perspectives.The results show that many architects and designers are concerned about environmental problems and the built environment’s contribution but have a limited understandi...
With the climate change we are experiencing today, the number and intensity of heatwaves are incr... more With the climate change we are experiencing today, the number and intensity of heatwaves are increasing dramatically, significantly impacting our buildings’ overheating. The majority of the prefabricated concrete panel buildings in Hungary are considered outdated from an energy point of view. These buildings may be at greater risk from extreme weather events. To examine this, long-term monitoring measurements are needed. Therefore, we developed a unique, reliable, and cost-effective wireless monitoring system, which can track in real time the indoor air quality data (temperature, relative humidity, CO2) of the investigated apartment building, as well as users’ habits, such as resident presence, window opening, and blind movement. The data were used to analyse and quantify the summer overheating of the dwelling and user habits. The measurements showed that the average temperature in all rooms was above 26 °C, and there were several occasions when the temperature exceeded 30 °C. Overh...
2016. január 1-én lépett életbe az épületek energetikai jellemzőinek meghatározásáról szóló 7/200... more 2016. január 1-én lépett életbe az épületek energetikai jellemzőinek meghatározásáról szóló 7/2006 (V. 24.) TNM rendelet, illetve az épületek tanúsításáról szóló 176/2008. (VI.30.) Korm. rendelet legújabb módosítása. A rendelettervezeteket 2015-ben több szakmai szerv is véleményezte, az alapvető ellentmondásokat és problémákat jelezték az illetékes minisztérium számára. 2015 végén több, a témában jártas szakember összefogásával nyílt levélben fordultunk a helyettes államtitkárhoz, amelyben a legkritikusabb kérdéseket pontokba szedtük. A levél a Magyar Épületgépészet c. folyóiratban is megjelent. A tervezett rendelet végül jelentős változtatások és a kritikákra adott érdemi válaszok nélkül életbe lépett. Jelen formájában a rendelet több kisebb és több nagyobb sebből vérzik. Ezek részben már most is félreértésekre adnak okot, de jó részük csak akkor válik majd nyilvánvalóvá, amikor a közel nulla energiaigényű épületek követelményét egyre többen alkalmazzák majd. Elsősorban a megújuló ...
Life CycleAssessment is a more and more widely used method for the environmental evaluation of bu... more Life CycleAssessment is a more and more widely used method for the environmental evaluation of buildings. In this paper, we present a modular methodology for the environmental assessment and optimisation of buildings. The methodology is implemented in a parametric design tool where the building geometry can be modelled in 3D, then the energy performance is determined with the energy calculation module and the environmental impact is calculated with the LCA module. The life cycle impact minimization is possible through the optimization module.The method is demonstrated on a case study of a typical model of a house described by a typology of the Hungarian building stock.We present the application of the method for both new building design and energy retrofitting. Such typological assessments facilitate the further modelling of a complete building stock (e.g. residential buildings), and with the help of optimization tools, the potential for environmental impact mitigation of the housin...
For environmental accounting of buildings Life Cycle Assessment is a proper and more and more wid... more For environmental accounting of buildings Life Cycle Assessment is a proper and more and more widespread method.The assessment of the embodied materials iswell covered by constantly improving databases (Life Cycle Inventories). On the other hand, calculation methods for the operation phase of the buildings vary in the literature. Specifically the calculation of the environmental impact related to the use of the energy source raise important questions. Our results show that in many cases the energy source has the most significant influence on the environmental impact of a building. The consideration of future change in the electricity production mix is a key aspect in the modelling of the environmental impacts. In this paper, we present a method for determining the future electricity production in Hungary and we investigate its influence on the specific environmental impacts
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