Attia, Shady Galal Mohamed
[UCL]
De Herde, André
[UCL]
Several bodies including the DOE, ASHRAE and the IEA SHC Task 40 are working on developing
definitions for Net Zero Energy Buildings (NZEBs). Most existing definitions are based on setting a performance
metric (quantity and quality) such as site energy, source energy, energy costs, or emissions, and a boundary for
the energy source. However, the problem of most existing definitions is that they neglect the energy use during
the whole building lifecycle, neglect the climatic context, neglect the urban or city scale, derive from a ‘zero’ or
neutralizing notion, link the energy use to area separately from occupants and do not specify the intended
definition audience they address e.g. policymakers or building developers or construction professionals. On the
other hand, the cradle to cradle approach encourages the creation of ecologically positive footprint buildings
where buildings are very efficient by design and by using suitable technologies to become energy positive. The
cradle to cradle approach allows us to examine broader criteria including the embodied energy, environmental
impact, energy storage and the management of plus energy. Therefore, in this paper, we discuss those
problems and suggest a necessary shift to approach NZEB definition, from a cradle to cradle approach rather
from a balance approach. This paper provides an overview of existing definitions and compares their impact
toward cradle to cradle NZEBs. Finally, the paper sets three principles for defining NZEBs and suggests a
definition, metric and calculation method from a cradle to cradle approach.
Bibliographic reference |
Attia, Shady Galal Mohamed ; De Herde, André. Defining Zero Energy Buildings from a Cradle to Cradle Approach.In: Passive and Low Energy Architecture, Vol. 1, no. 1 (2011) |
Permanent URL |
http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/92510 |