Evaluating Insulation, Glazing and Airtightness Options for Passivhaus EnerPHit Retrofitting of a Dwelling in China’s Hot Summer–Cold Winter Climate Region

Chenfei Liu, Stephen Sharples and Haniyeh Mohammadpourkarbasi
Additional contact information
Chenfei Liu: School of Architecture, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7ZN, UK
Stephen Sharples: School of Architecture, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7ZN, UK
Haniyeh Mohammadpourkarbasi: School of Architecture, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7ZN, UK

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 21, 1-17

Abstract: Passivhaus EnerPHit is a rigorous retrofit energy standard for buildings, based on high thermal insulation and airtightness levels, which aims to significantly reduce building energy consumption during operation. However, extra retrofit materials are required to achieve this standard, which raises a contradiction between how to balance the environmental impacts of the retrofitting material inputs and extremely low energy consumption after retrofit. This motivated the analysis in this paper, which aimed to evaluate the possibilities of reducing the required retrofitting material inputs when trying to achieve the EnerPHit energy standard using a typical suburban dwelling in China’s hot summer–cold winter climate region as a case study. Firstly, how the insulation performance of each envelope component affected the building’s energy consumption was analysed. Based on this, sensitivity simulations of combinations of different insulation levels with different fabric components were investigated under four scenarios of insulation levels, airtightness and glazing choice. The final proposed retrofitting plans achieved the EnerPHit standard with insulation materials’ savings between 18% to 58% compared to a baseline retrofit plan, and this led, in turn, to 3.9 to 12.6 tonnes of carbon reductions. Moreover, an energy-saving of 87% in heating and 70% in cooling was achieved compared with the pre-retrofit dwelling.

Keywords: Passivhaus EnerPHit standard; energy retrofitting; building envelope; parametric analysis; energy efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/21/6950/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/21/6950/ (text/html)

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:gam:jeners:v:14:y:2021:i:21:p:6950-:d:662343

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().