Most zero-energy concepts focus on a reduction of the non-renewable operational energy use in buildings rather than taking the reduction of their life cycle energy use as a starting point. Nevertheless, the life cycle embodied and end-of-life energy will become more important, especially in buildings with low operational energy. Therefore, the life cycle energy use of a Belgian zero-energy reference house is examined by means of life cycle energy assessment. The influence of design decisions and regulations on the building construction type, the building services, and the performance of the building envelope are investigated. In terms of thermal performance of the building, the results show that the life cycle embodied energy in zero-energy houses with passive or standard thermal performance was not substantially different. From a life cycle energy perspective, passive house requirements are not essential criteria for zero-energy houses in Belgium. On the other hand, large life cycle energy savings were obtained through a proficient selection of all building construction materials and services. For the life cycle embodied energy in building constructions, the best timber frame and masonry houses were equally efficient. Wood pellets and photovoltaic panels were decisive factors in the life cycle embodied energy of building services
Modelling of heating and cooling demand of the building stock is valuable for estimating the sizing of HVAC technologies. However, designer faces oversizing problems as they rely on their experiences or the use of single zone simulations. Multizone building stock models that take into consideration the interaction between the different zones' profiles, and building envelope properties to obtain reliable estimations is needed. Simulations of large amount of building stock models require extensive computation and simulation time. Therefore, we developed multi-zone generic modelling approach that allows modelling and simulation of large population of building stock cases in shorter time. The approach relies on splitting the building into modules that are modelled separately and of which the simulation results are aggregated afterwards. This paper investigates the strengths and limitations of the proposed approach on a selected case-study building by comparing it to classical modelling approaches. A reduction of 80% in simulation time was achieved. The hourly heating and cooling demands for the proposed and classical approaches reached a lowest deviation of 1.4% for buildings with higher U-values, and one set temperature.
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