Towards nearly zero-energy residential neighbourhoods in the European Union: A case study

Abstract

The European Union (EU) aims to establish a guideline that requires all new buildings to comply with nearly zero-energy buildings (NZEB) by 2030. This decision involves new technologies based on concepts that meet international standards. This research aims to review the literature on 'net zero-energy building' and analyses the possibility of applying this research on nine statistically representative neighbourhoods of the building stock'in Belgium, depending on the built density. All the areas, grouped into four categories (urban, peri-urban, suburban, and rural neighbourhoods), were used for current energy consumption analysis and to evaluate prospective scenarios based on four major challenges, namely climate change, building renovations, photovoltaic panels, and sustainable mobility. In addition, a new approach combining several scenarios to further improve energy needs at the neighbourhood scale is also highlighted. The nine different types of neighbourhoods studied are commonly found in different countries across the EU. The average reduction in energy consumption of neighbourhoods (buildings + daily mobility) in 2040 (compared to reference year 2012) will likely reach 5.69% attributable to a 20% reduction in distances travelled, 6.48% to climate change, 12.95% to the current annual buildings renovation rate, 18.76%-100% electric cars, 22.26% for doubling the current buildings renovation rate, 31.62% and 63.25% to a light or heavy renovation of the entire building stock, respectively. Moreover, installing 20 m 2 of solar panels on the rooftops of each residential building would produce renewable energy equivalent to 6.53% of the current global energy consumption. Finally, the results show that more than 90% of current energy consumption can be reduced at the neighbourhood scale (buildings + daily mobility) by combining a heavy renovation of all the buildings, electric vehicles, and photovoltaic panels. This scenario allows reaching the 'nearly zero-energy' target at the neighbourhood scale.

Transition to Zero Energy and Low Carbon Emission in Residential Buildings Located in Tropical and Temperate Climates

“…From this table, it was observed that renovation allows reducing the energy consumption between 9.7% and 35.5% in these three cities. Furthermore, the energy demand is 63% higher in the coastal region than in high altitude regions, which confirms the previous study carried out by Nematchoua et al [29][30][31][32]. In particular, in Table 7, it can be observed that, after the revision process, the zero-energy objective is respected (the sum of the energy demand and the green energy generated by some photovoltaic panels (PV) is equal to zero).…”

Energy Sustainability with a Focus on Environmental Perspectives

“…Research on net-zero and net-positive energy buildings has been reported (Athienitis and O’Brien 2015 ; Mehrjerdi et al 2019 ; Sun et al 2019 ), while the International Energy Agency included an annex on “Towards Net-zero Energy Solar Building” and Canada launched in 2011 the Smart Net-zero Energy Buildings Strategic Research Network ( http://www.solarbuildings.ca ). The net-zero and net-positive energy building concepts can be expanded to include transportation devices that are part of the building (Garmsiri et al 2016 ; Sun et al 2019 ) and to net-zero and net-positive energy communities (Rad et al 2017 ; Hachem-Vermette et al 2019 ; Karunathilake et al 2019 ; Nematchoua et al 2021 ).

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A Vision for Energy Decarbonization: Planning Sustainable Tertiary Sites as Net-Zero Energy Systems

“…The technologies, construction design, and their operation have been presented in [13] and [14]. The research has generally focused on small residential systems [15][16][17] and to a lesser extent on industrial systems [18][19][20][21]. However, large industrial operators Different solutions have been investigated regarding accelerating the decarbonization process.…”