Life-Cycle Assessments of Near Zero Energy Buildings (NZEBS) and Beyond in Comparison with Regular New Buildings
Abstract
In one of the work packages of a current EU Horizon 2020 project “Cost reduction of new Nearly Zero-Energy Buildings – CoNZEBs” (Zinzi et al. 2019) life-cycle costs (LCC) and life cycle environmental impact analyses (LCA) of several technical solution sets to reach NZEB and beyond NZEB levels for new multifamily buildings in four European countries are carried out. The first results obtained so far - for Denmark - are quite remarkable as they indicate that a balance point between energy saving measures and renewable energy (solar) supply has been crossed. In other words, the LCC and LCA results show that both for economic and environmental reasons it pays off to reduce insulation levels and introduce PV-systems and/or solar heating systems for near zero energy buildings. During the beginning of 2019, the analyses will be carried out also for the other countries participating in CoNZEBs (Germany, Italy and Slovenia). This will reveal differences between the countries and possibly more remarkable results concerning the balance between energy efficiency measures and solar energy supply.