2016 ASHRAE Winter Conference

Buildings account for 40% of CO2 emissions in the UK and around 25% in China. In an attempt to mitigate global warming and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the UK Government is committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 80% below the 1990’s level by 2050; China pledged a 40–45% decrease in CO2 emissions per GDP by 2020 against 2005 levels. To achieve these targets, building retrofitting is one of the efficient ways to improve building energy efficiency and the associated CO2 emissions. In order to evaluate the potential energy savings that can be achieved through building retrofit plans, this study aims to assess two levels of deep retrofit in a typical office building. These retrofit scenarios are assessed using numerical simulation of a prototypical building in five climate zones in china as well as London and Aberdeen in the UK. Numerical simulations have been conducted using the EnergyPlus software. The outcomes of this study reveal that deep retrofit in office buildings can potentially achieve up to 54% energy saving compared with the energy consumption of buildings designed in 1980(s). However, economic factors should be also considered in the process of decision making to choose the most appropriate building retrofit strategy.

High performance buildings are becoming more prevalent in new Army construction projects. Unfortunately, these new designs often do not take into account preventive procedures to avoid thermal bridging effects which are localized heat flow between the building interior and exterior. These effects become much more significant as buildings are designed to be highly insulated and better sealed against air leakage. Researchers from the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center - Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (ERDC-CERL) visited several Army installations and used infra-red imaging to survey buildings to identify places in the building envelope where thermal bridging commonly occur. Characteristic construction sections were selected for heat transfer modeling to quantify the thermal bridging impact and develop general mitigation solutions. This manuscript presents examples of the developed U.S. Army ERDC-CERL Thermal Bridge Mitigation Catalog, which includes architectural details thermal bridge modeling values (ψ and U-factors), and schematics of good construction practices to improve the building envelope performance of typical Army facilities. In addition, this work includes developed visual step-by-step sequencing examples to be used by the construction practitioner for the assembly of a properly mitigated thermal bridge detail in the building envelope.

The aim of the “School of the Future” project which receives funding within the EU’s 7th Framework Program, is to design, demonstrate, evaluate and communicate shining examples of how to reach the future high performance building level. School buildings, their owners and their primary users, namely pupils (the next generation) are the focus of the project. Both the energy and indoor environment performance of four demonstration buildings in four European countries and climates is being greatly improved due to holistic retrofits to the building envelope, the service systems, the integration of renewables, and building management systems. This paper describes the EU project, including all results, a comparison of the four demonstration buildings, and a detailed description of the German demonstration project.

Many innovative energy-saving strategies have been implemented in energy efficient and sustainable building design to reduce overall energy use and operational cost. However, measurement of the actual energy usage and verification of implemented energy-saving design and strategies are also required to ensure the building performs as expected. This paper presents a comprehensive evaluation of the energy performance at the Iowa Utilities Board and Office of Consumer Advocate (IUB-OCA) building by examining annual detailed sub-metered data.