Zero energy buildings and sustainable development implications – A review

Danny H.W. Li, Liu Yang and Joseph C. Lam

Energy, 2013, vol. 54, issue C, 1-10

Abstract: Buildings account for a significant proportion of the total energy and carbon emissions worldwide, and play an important role in formulating sustainable development strategies. There is a growing interest in ZEBs (zero energy buildings) in recent years. Several countries have adopted or considering establishing ZEBs as their future building energy targets to help alleviate the problems concerning the depletion of energy resources and the deterioration of the environment. Broadly speaking, ZEBs involve two design strategies – minimizing the need for energy use in buildings (especially for heating and cooling) through EEMs (energy-efficient measures) and adopting RETs (renewable energy and other technologies) to meet the remaining energy needs. This paper reviews the works related to these two strategies. EEMs include building envelopes, internal conditions, and building services systems; RETs cover photovoltaic/building-integrated photovoltaic, wind turbines, solar thermal (solar water heaters), heat pumps, and district heating and cooling. Issues pertaining to sustainable development implications and further research work required are also highlighted. These include life-cycle cost and environmental impacts, climate change and social policy issues.

Keywords: Zero energy buildings; Energy-efficient measures; Renewable energy technologies; Sustainable development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (122)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544213001035
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:54:y:2013:i:c:p:1-10

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2013.01.070

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().