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Several definitions of Zero Energy Buildings (ZEB) exist in literature and different implementations of the term can be found in National laws/regulations. The differences among the Member States in nomenclature and definition of the main indicators often lead to incomparable results and difficulties in transfer and diffusion of technologies across the EU. The paper aims to investigate the topic of ZEB by clarifying the meaning of nearly ZEB and Net ZEB through the application of the definitions in a case study of a high-performance building (certified Passivhaus) located in Sicily, Italy. The house fulfils the requirements of nearly ZEB, according to Italian legislation, and satisfies the Net ZEB’s yearly balance between imported and exported energy. However, the use of shorter calculation time periods highlights the presence of a relatively large mismatch between the time of use and of renewable generation. Finally, the results of the thermal comfort analysis show the achievement of adaptive thermal comfort in summer thanks to the passive features of the building (mass, external thermal insulation, solar protections) and passive techniques for heat removal (night ventilation and ground exchange).

In the era of climate change and rapid urbanisation, communities and infrastructures need to be planned and designed in a way that promotes sustainable living. The provision of clean and affordable energy is a key to this aim. This paper proposes a technology assessment approach that is based on the triple bottom line (environmental, social and economic) sustainability framework. This approach can be employed in the technology screening that is involved in the early stages of the energy master planning process and can be applied to different community typologies in various locations and climates. The developed approach is demonstrated through a new urban renewal project case study in Fishermans Bend, Melbourne, in which a set of technological options were screened according to the project’s goals. The connection between the energy master plan and local and global sustainable development goals is discussed and policy interventions are proposed. The results show that the proposed approach could effectively enable the evaluation of the technological sustainability performance of the community by demonstrating the design trade-offs and the implementation of the sustainability objectives during the energy master planning process. Moreover, the proposed approach could provide guidance for effective policy making. It was found that government energy policies, regulations and incentives play a vital role in the feasibility of an energy master plan. Lastly, the proposed approach could facilitate the achievement of local and international targets, such as the UN SDGs, by 2050.

In district energy systems planning, the calculation of energy needs is a crucial step in making the investment profitable. Although several computational approaches exist for estimating the thermal energy need of individual buildings, this is challenging at the district level due to the amount of data needed, the diversity of building types, and the uncertainty of connections. The aim of this paper is to present a simplified measurement-based methodology for estimating the cooling energy needs at the district level, which can be employed in the preliminary sizing and design of a district cooling network. The methodology proposed is suitable for tertiary buildings and is based on building electricity bills as historical data to calculate the yearly cooling demand. Then, the developed method is applied to a real case study: the feasibility analysis of a sustainable district cooling network for a hotel district in the city of Marrakech. The designed system foresees a 23-MWcold district cooling network that is 4 km long, supplying 26 GWh of cooling to the tourist area. The results show that the proposed methodology for cooling demand estimation is coherent with the other existing methods in the literature.