Energy savings in new built houses; not the reality but the reference situation determines the amount of savings

Panel: Panel 3. Monitoring & evaluation: understanding change and how to deliver energy efficiency

Authors:
Cees Maas, SenterNovem, The Netherlands
Harry Vreuls, SenterNovem, The Netherlands
Tom Monné, SenterNovem, The Netherlands

Abstract

All over Europe the building regulations include energy saving components. In the 1980s and 90s most building regulations set levels for individual building components and installations. However, combinations of such measures and other energy saving techniques became increasingly important for the achievement of the desired energy performance. Today many EU Member States use a single integrated energy performance measure to set an energy efficiency standard for new buildings. In their plans to generate energy savings almost all EU Member States include increased levels of energy efficiency for new buildings in their National Energy Efficiency Action Plans. But for calculating these energy savings one cannot compare the new with the old situation. So a reference situation has to be defined to which the energy use of a new building can be compared.

This paper presents several reference situations that could be used for the energy saving calculations for newly build houses and illustrates these by examples for the Netherlands. It shows what the consequences are of the selection of each of these references and how this will result in different (calculated) energy savings. In addition the dynamic of the reference situation will be presented and the pros and cons of a static and a dynamic approach will be illustrated with an example. The paper concludes with a proposition for the baseline in the harmonised reporting system of the ESD and the consequences of the proposed choice.