Building Energy Efficiency and Sustainability

Abstract

Architects and engineers play a key role in the transformation of the building sector toward energy efficiency and climate change mitigation. Buildings are responsible for 40% of the total energy consumption and 11.9% of the CO2 emission. In this sense, various international agreements are focused to decarbonize buildings, and the concept of nearly Zero-Energy Buildings (nZEB) as well as the implementation of Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) have been designed. For that reason, building energy efficiency projects could be a driving force to achieve a low-carbon building stock and Energy Poverty (EP) mitigation. This chapter considers energy improvements and comfortable indoor spaces, in which the most appropriate operational guidelines and the users’ training measures are crucial. With this approach, adaptive thermal comfort models could be an opportunity to guarantee sustainable use of Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems without affecting users’ thermal comfort. This paves the way for significant reductions in energy consumption with a more responsible use of HVAC systems considering the adaptive thermal comfort models.