The age of positive energy buildings has come

Panel: 5B. Cutting the energy use of buildings: Policy and programmes

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Hans Erhorn, Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics (IBP), Germany
Heike Erhorn-Kluttig, Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics, Germany

Abstract

For quite a long time, experts considered zero energy buildings or buildings that do not require a heating system (as the passive house was inappropriately described at the begin) to be landmarks in this development process. The vision of a building that produces more energy than it uses for running the technical building systems (and thus becomes an energy-generating unit itself) once belonged to a distant, perhaps even unattainable future. Undoubtedly, the development of the surplus energy house marks another quantum leap in the field of energy research to which Fraunhofer IBP research staff contributed their share, proving great commitment and initiative. In the meantime, IBP's Heat Technology team has extended its scope, now providing surplus energy building concepts not only for various residential buildings, school buildings and other educational buildings, but also for office buildings and even for existing buildings. Each of the 250 exciting pilot building projects the Heat Technology team has realized so far has taken the development a step further.

Buildings functioning as energy providers create a scenario that opens up completely new ways of securing the energy supply. To ensure sustainable success, it takes both: detailed, fully developed concepts of building types and excellent quality of building construction. Equipped with these parameters, energy solutions for districts or even for entire cities can be tackled.

Pilot projects need strong partners who pull together to ensure that such pilot schemes will have the necessary effectiveness. The high relevance of these research projects is confirmed by the fact that emerging superior trends need to be analysed in the course of the project, that guiding principles have to be derived from these analyses, and that experience gained from the project has to be summarized in guidelines, for instance.

The paper will describe the current developments and visualize trends in the building practice.