ECBCS News is published twice each year (in June and December). It is intended for a general audience of those active in fields relating to operational energy saving for buildings and community systems.

The Annual Report provides an overview of progress made by the ECBCS Programme, including summaries of new, ongoing and recently completed projects.

Objective: To be the primary international information centre on research and development in the fields of air infiltration and ventilation, and thus to provide a high quality technical and information forum covering the areas of ventilation and air infiltration in the built environment with respect to efficient energy use, good indoor air quality and thermal comfort.

Objective: Investigate the performance of responsive building elements and their integration in new responsive building concepts, and to develop guidelines and procedures for the design of responsive building concepts, including the estimation of the environmental performance of responsive building elements.

Objective: Identify and to accelerate the widespread use of appropriate energy efficient high-quality lighting technologies and their integration with other building systems, making them the preferred choice of lighting designers, owners and users.

Objective: Improve the decision making process for energy retrofitting of government non-residential buildings, e.g. office / administrative buildings, dormitories / barracks, service buildings and production and maintenance facilities. Though the focus is on government buildings, many results can be applied to similar private sector buildings. Collectively, these building types represent a substantial part of the non-residential building stock.

Objective: Enable the effective commissioning of existing and future buildings for improved operating performance. The commissioning techniques developed through this research will help to transition the industry from the intuitive approach that is currently employed in the operation of buildings to a more systematic operation that focuses on achieving significant energy savings.

Objective: Promote the most efficient combinations of heating and cooling techniques in air-conditioned buildings, due to the use of heat recovery and reversible systems. The main goals are:

• To allow the quick identification of heat pumping potential in existing buildings
• To help designers to consider “heat pumping” solutions and to allow for future possibilities
• To document the technological possibilities and heat pumping solutions
• To improve commissioning and operation of buildings equipped with heat pump systems
• To make available a set of reference case studies

Objective: From an economic and environmental point of view, high exergy energy sources should mainly be used in industry to allow for the production of high quality products. The Low Exergy (LowEx) approach entails matching the quality levels of exergy supply and demand, in order to streamline the use of high-value energy resources and make best use of low-value energy before it reaches the ambient environment.

Objective: Develop and demonstrate innovative whole building renovation concepts for typical apartment buildings, minimising the primary energy use to 30-50 kWh/(m2·year) for heating, cooling and domestic hot water. The concepts focus on standardized and prefabricated renovation modules for façades and roofs. It is anticipated that they will substantially enhance the building renovation quality and comfort in existing residential buildings.

Objective: Local energy planning on a community level should be, in addition to being a traditional engineering task, an interdisciplinary approach covering aspects of decision-making, project management and implementation instruments; apply the principles of such a holistic approach to community energy planning and to provide the necessary methods and instruments to urban planners, decision makers and stakeholders.

Objective: Study current net-zero, near net-zero and very low energy buildings and to develop a common understanding, a harmonised international definitions framework, tools, innovative solutions and industry guidelines. To achieve this objective the project will document and propose practical NZEB demonstration projects, with convincing architectural quality.

Objective: Enrich our understanding of energy performance of buildings, to broaden our knowledge about determinant factors for total building energy use, and to assess short- and long-term energy measures, policies and technologies.

Objective: Undertake an expansive analysis of micro-cogeneration and associated technologies. The scope of activities will encompass:

• multi-source micro-cogeneration systems, polygeneration systems (i.e. integrated heating / cooling / power generation systems) and renewable hybrid systems (collectively termed micro-generation);
• integration of micro-generation, energy storage and demand side management technologies at a local level (integrated systems);
• customised and optimum control strategies for integrated systems;
• analysis of integrated systems performance when serving single and multiple residences along with small commercial premises;
• analysis of the wider effects of micro-generation on the power distribution system.

Objectives:

• develop a common framework for probabilistic assessment of energy retrofitting measures
• develop and validate probabilistic tools for energy use, life cycle cost and hygrothermal performance
• collect and analyse data in order to create stochastic data sets
• apply and demonstrate the probabilistic methodology on at least five real life case studies, with a focus on residential buildings