There is an increasing pressure on cities worldwide to accommodate the increasing population.Most cities are likely to expand in the coming decades and this expansion will probably take place as low-density neighbourhoods. It is therefore crucial to assess the energy demand and related greenhouse gas emissions of such development from a comprehensive perspective. This paper uses a representative low density case study neighbourhood near Melbourne, Australia, to assess its energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions over 100 years. Different housing typologies, such as row houses and low-rise apartment buildings, are tested. Results show that the energy required to produce and replace building materials and infrastructures constitutes nearly 26.9% of the total energy consumption while operational and transport requirements represented 39.4% and 33.7% respectively. Variations to the housing types reveal that apartment buildings reduce the energy consumption per capita by 19.6% compared to the one-storey single family detached house typical pattern. Regardless of the uncertainty in the data, the main conclusion is that each of the embodied, operational and transport energy demand and associated greenhouse gas emissions should be lowered in order effectively reduce the environmental impacts of new urban neighbourhoods.
Abstract:The current energy assessment of residential buildings focuses mainly on their operational energy demand, notably in terms of space heating and cooling. The embodied energy requirements of buildings and the transport energy consumption of their users are typically overlooked. Recent studies have shown that these two energy demands can represent more than half of the life cycle energy of a residential building over 50 years. This article presents a framework which takes into account energy requirements at the building scale, i.e. the embodied and operational energy of the building and its maintenance and refurbishment, and at the city scale, i.e. the embodied energy of nearby infrastructures (such as roads, power lines, etc.) and the transport energy (direct and indirect) of its users.Results from two test cases, located in Brussels, Belgium and Melbourne, Australia, confirm that each of the embodied, operational and transport requirements are nearly equally important. By integrating these three energy flows, the developed framework and associated software provides architects, building designers, planners and decision makers with a powerful tool to effectively reduce the overall energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions of residential buildings.
The project IDEA – Interactive Database for Energy‐efficient Architecture – is a multinational collaborative project to build a European knowledge base on advanced energy conscious building design. At the core of this project are two earlier multimedia developments, the Swiss program DIAS and the German adaptation NESA which present the principles and applications of solar architecture in the respective national contexts. IDEA aims to improve know‐how of European professionals and exchange of information between them. The database includes information on exemplary buildings, their technical concepts and on other specific conditions. IDEA presents the existing state of the art in the field of energy‐efficient architecture by means of a multimedia database of built examples, an encyclopedia of design concepts and a set of interactive design support tools. The built examples have been selected from around Europe. IDEA assembles technical information on materials and energy‐related standards and regulations and provides climatic data from all relevant European regions.
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