This paper analyzes utilization of renewable energy systems and efficient building envelopes in the semi-arid climate. The proposed model evaluates renewable energy systems solutions as well as economic- and energy-efficient construction materials for the net zero-energy buildings (NZEB) in semi-arid climates. The objective of this paper is to optimize total energy cost and environmental impact...

There are high hopes and expectations in the potential of Net-Zero Energy Buildings (NZEB) to contribute to combat the adverse environmental effects from intensive human activity, including energy use. An important related question that has received insufficient attention and is therefore addressed in this study, is how NZEB equipped with renewable energy (RE) systems would perform in future cl...

Buildings are the focus of European (EU) policies aimed at a sustainable and competitive low-carbon economy by 2020. Reducing energy consumption of existing buildings and achieving nearly zero energy buildings (NZEBs) are the core of the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) and the recast of the Energy Performance of Building Directive (EPBD). To comply with these requirements, Member States have ...

This study aims to investigate the fulfillment of four Net Zero Energy Building (NZEB) balances, NZEB-PE, NZEB-site, NZEB-emission and NZEB-cost, considering the four metrics of primary energy (PE), site energy, CO2-eqemissions and energy cost, respectively, using weighting factors based on Finnish and international reference data. The study analyzes five conventional energy systems and seven b...

Smart applications of the Internet of Things are improving the performance of buildings, reducing energy demand. Local and smart networks, soft computing methodologies, machine intelligence algorithms and pervasive sensors are some of the basics of energy optimization strategies developed for the benefit of environmental sustainability and user comfort. This work presents a distributed sensor-p...

In the United States, university buildings use 17% of total non-residential building energy per year. According to the NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory), the average lifecycle of a building in a university is 42 years with an EUI (energy use intensity) of 23 kWh/m/y. Current building and energy codes limit the EUI to 16 kWh/m/y for new school buildings; this benchmark can vary dependi...

Due to low energy price, economic optimization of consumption has no justification for users in Iran. Nowadays, the issue of ending fossil fuels, production of greenhouse gases and the main role of building in consumption of considerable amount of energy has drawn the focus of global researches to a new concept called net zero energy building. In this study, modeling, simulation and energy anal...

In this study, in order to evaluate the possibility of achieving Net Zero Energy Building (NZEB) goal, history sustainable construction, and available green-rating systems with specific focus on Leadership & Environmental Design (LEED) rating system were explained. LEED was selected as most prevalent industry analyze its efficiencies/drawbacks specifically regards energy efficiency. The goa...

To cope with ‘Post-2020’, each country set its national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction target (e.g., South Korea: 37%) below its business-as-usual level by 2030. Toward this end, it is necessary to implement the net-zero energy building (nZEB) in the building sector, which accounts for more than 25% of the national GHG emissions and has a great potential to reduce GHG emissions. In th...