Energy master planning for net-zero emission communities: State of the art and research challenges

Implementation of Local Energy Plans in Western Switzerland: Survey of the Current State and Possible Paths Forward

“…The appropriate content of local energy plans, and the process needed to draft and ratify them, is the subject of intense research, for example on the importance of participatory approaches [5], on the format of the energy objective used to drive the local energy plans [6], or on the possibilities of cities to act in the complicated field of energy [7]. Different reviews on urban energy planning methodologies [8][9][10][11] and on the simulation tools used to support these processes [12] are available and detail the current scope of local energy plans.…”

Integrated and smart design for buildings and communities

“…Planning for zero energy at the neighbourhood scale is a complex task that involves multiple actors and requires an integrated approach while also setting specific longterm goals for the design [39,168]. This was the approach followed for the specific case study by setting solid performance targets and reaching them through an integrated approach to design, construction and monitoring.…”

“…In certain climates, the life cycle cost (LCC) of ZEBs can be higher than the baseline [35] The transition of the concept from single buildings to building complexes offers the potential of expanding the scale of zero energy performance while overcoming the limitations of single buildings related to building use, size, renewable energy availability on-site and costs [25,28,29,36,37]. Therefore, despite lacking one shared and acknowledged definition and calculation approach [16,23,24,38,39], the zero energy concept has intrigued researchers to investigate its applicability on a bigger scale, usually the scale of a sub-section of a city.…”

“…The achievement of optimized energy and cost-efficient solutions for zero energy neighbourhoods requires an integrated, holistic approach to design and simulation [167]. Furthermore, energy design and optimization beyond single buildings can be optimally planned and managed through integrated energy master planning including multiple stakeholders and continuous iterations [39,168]. An integrated approach to design, construction and monitoring has been developed and implemented in four pilot neighbourhoods (Figure 3) with the aim to achieve specific energy and cost targets.…”

“…The definition of the zero energy boundary and consequently of the zero energy balance has been thoroughly discussed in the literature for single ZEBs, still with no concrete and commonly accepted approach [16,23,24,38]. Consequently, this ambiguity is transferred to the neighbourhood scale [39]. At neighbourhood scale, extra considerations can be entered, such as the inclusion of all types of energy in the balance [44], as well as neighbourhood characteristics that contribute to or hinder the balance [6].…”