Optimum envelope design toward zero energy buildings in Iran

Abstract

Buildings, commercial and residential combined, account for around 40% of total energy consumption in Iran. Energy consumption in buildings is predicted to increase in the the coming decades decades and immediate actions are required to meet the needs of future generations. Zero energy building (ZEB) is an important concept that can help nations to have a sustainable future. An important step for building a ZEB is to minimize the energy lost from the building, and the envelope of buildings plays a vital role in achieving minimal energy losses. In this paper, a life cycle cost (LCC) analysis is adopted to find the optimum insulation thickness for the common wall structure in Iran. Then, the Iranian standard (Chapter 19) for building envelopes have been reviewed and compared with the minimum requirements of the ASHRAE standard 90.2. The comparison shows that the Iranian standards for buildings envelopes are comparable with the ASHRAE standard 90.2 for the external wall, while ASHRAE requires higher minimum thermal resistance for ceiling compare to chapter 19. The optimization results suggest smaller minimum thermal resistance compare to chapter 19; this is mainly resulting from the characteristic of the Iranian economy (high inflation rate) and subsidized energy sector. Therefore, energy policy in the country needs to be reformed to promote energy conservation in buildings and hence zero energy buildings.

Passive Strategies for Building Retrofitting: Performances Analysis and Incentive Policies for the Iranian Scenario

“…The CC PC has been calculated on the basis of the Iranian market reference for the proposed interventions [7,75,76]. In addition, because of the lack of a standardized and detailed price list for construction materials, the authors evaluated and actualized the prices by comparing the references [7,75,76] with the current Iranian market in IRR, then converted to USD considering an IRR/USD exchange rate of ~1/0.000024 [77].…”

“…The CC PC has been calculated on the basis of the Iranian market reference for the proposed interventions [7,75,76]. In addition, because of the lack of a standardized and detailed price list for construction materials, the authors evaluated and actualized the prices by comparing the references [7,75,76] with the current Iranian market in IRR, then converted to USD considering an IRR/USD exchange rate of ~1/0.000024 [77]. Therefore, in this work, the cost of the whole SS facade system, including the renovation materials (for the insulation panels, metal structure for the ventilated facade, and tensile material), and the cost for the scaffolding and the cost of labor, has been assumed equal to 21.78 $/m 2 .…”

“…In more detail, Iranian primary energy consumption has increased by about 33% in the last decade [5] and, following worldwide statistical trends, one of the largest sources of energy demand (almost 40%) is in buildings [6], which also account for 28% of total CO 2 emissions [7]. In particular, the high emissions in the big industrial cities lead to several health problems in citizens, due to low air quality.…”

Land Suitability Analysis for Identifying Industrial Zones in Duhok District, Kurdistan Region of Iraq

“…For identifying suitable industrial zones, effective factors should be identified first. In this study, the factors were selected from previous similar research [1,2,3,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27], and national and international regulations. A comprehensive set of factors were identified and then the factors were carefully screened to select the final factors based on data availability.…”

Multi-Objective Techno-Economic Optimization of Design Parameters for Residential Buildings in Different Climate Zones

“…In most regions, building energy standards are established but contain limited information on building envelope components. Usually, those standards provide the allowable thermal resistance or transmittance of the envelope components and WWR in some cases [39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55]. The comprehensive design approach involves building performance simulations, which are time-consuming and require knowledge of complicated processes.…”