World Sustainable Energy Days Next 2014

As the energy performance of buildings is central to any effective strategy designed to mitigate climate change, the building community needs better access to building performance data to improve current policies. This chapter presents the results of research examining the current data quality, data collection best practices and data gaps at the global level based on a desktop survey of ex-post studies and a data quality matrix prepared in collaboration with a group of global experts and modellers.

As the energy- and climate-related discussion evolves and becomes more complex, policy makers need more and better data to design and evaluate policies and programmes. The significance of data input determines the quality of decisions taken. Data are also the key element that allows making comparisons and establishing the monitoring systems to track the progress and impact of various policies. Currently, there is no official and centralized database on the European buildings stock. The buildings data are collected by different institutions (i.e. statistics offices, energy agencies, consultancy companies, research organisation, others) mainly on the member state level; its quality, availability and completeness varies significantly between the different countries.

One of the key challenges for the European buildings data collection is the issue of data harmonisation. Currently, even though various data are available from different sources (both official and unofficial) their cross-country comparison is very hard to conduct. Moreover, there is a need to better use of existing tools for data collection (i.e. central engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) and renovation registers), and also use of new, smart tools for data collection (especially for non-residential sector) and sharing.

If greenhouse gas emissions from the building sector are to be significantly reduced, all new buildings must be built to zero-energy standards. Mandatory dynamic building energy codes integrated into long-term strategies are necessary if these standards are to be met. This chapter presents a set of specially developed criteria that define the state of the art in building energy codes. These criteria form the basis of an interactive tool that facilitates the comparative analysis of 25 best practice building energy codes. This tool supports policy makers to develop more ambitious policies by outlining how current best practices may be improved to become state of the art.

This chapter assesses the options for both non-residential and residential buildings to reach a zero-energy building (ZEB) standard. Besides the already widely practiced consistent minimization of the energy demand for heating and hot water supply of buildings, further progress can be made by minimizing the electric energy demand. Besides highly efficient lighting, the calculations done showed a significant savings potential by using energy-efficient electrical devices.

The purpose of this chapter is to assess the effectiveness of individual refurbishment measures for common detached houses in Serbia and establish a design matrix of solutions. Dynamic simulations are performed for three typical houses in two cities. The results are arranged in a form of a toolbox where the measures are classified by their effectiveness. The toolbox could be used as a supportive instrument throughout design and serve as a pre-step in the house renovation in Serbia.

This chapter contributes to the debate around net-zero energy concept from a global perspective. By means of comprehensive modelling, it analyses how much global building energy consumption could be reduced through utilisation of building-integrated solar energy technologies and energy-efficiency improvements. Valuable insights on the locations and building types, in which it is feasible to achieve a net-zero level of energy performance through solar energy utilisation, are presented in world maps.

Long-term energy storage has great potential to decrease the consumption in buildings, particularly through saving summer excesses to cover winter demands, thus equilibrating the system in both seasons. This chapter deals with hot water storage over 6 months period for an example storage facility in Sofia. Using exact building and weather data in a mathematical model, taking into account fundamental thermodynamical relations, we show amount of energy stored, impact of convection on the thermal losses and we make reference to the building requirements and possible improvements.

The objective of this work is to analyze the heat demand of a low-energy house and to optimize the heating system control strategy. Low-energy houses minimize their heat losses by means of a highly insulated envelope. The considered heating system is composed of a pellet boiler supplying hot water to a floor heating system. The annual heat demand has been calculated with a focus on the effect of internal heat gains. Different solutions have been investigated to optimize the control strategy.

An electrical storage system is mainly used to increase self-consumption of the produced photovoltaic (PV) energy, to relieve the public power grid and to reduce the dependency on the grid. This chapter focuses on a technical simulation of a PV system linked to a storage unit and analyses its economic efficiency.

Green crowdfunding is an innovative financing vehicle that allows small investors to contribute towards the improved energy performance of buildings and, at the same time, provides an attractive source of funds for project owners or developers. Social media is of key importance for marketing crowdfunding projects. Some first success stories show how crowdfunding can be an attractive and sustainable business model. Nevertheless, time will tell whether or not this business model can handle more ambitious and comprehensive renovation strategies.

The comparative analysis shows that both the EU and the USA have a wide range of energy policies that allow flexibility in how targets are met. While the USA has renewable electric power and biofuel targets, EU has targets for renewable energy including heating and electric power and biofuel. The USA uses policy instruments to promote mainly electricity and biofuel. Contrary to policies in the USA, biomass energy policies in the EU emphasize all types of renewable energy output including heating.

The use of biomass as a heating fuel in northern British Columbia (BC) is an attractive alternative to traditional fossil fuels. The benefits of using biomass in BC include cost savings of at least 50 %, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and increased energy security in individual communities and opportunities for local employment and engagement. Using the Austrian biomass industry as a model to establish and grow the industry in northern BC, many of the early issues can be avoided, such as over-dimension, resulting in a highly productive and robust network. Achieving a high level of growth in the biomass industry in northern BC would require the involvement of the various levels of government, private businesses, and educational institutions and most importantly, the citizens of the communities it serves. Financing, technical expertise, fuel sources, and biomass technology are all available—it is a matter of engaging local municipalities and First Nation communities by promoting biomass heating as an economic and sustainable alternative.

In addition to the environmental reasons, growing energy demand, running out of fossil fuel supplies, and the expected increase in gas prices, all indicate that we must change in our power supply. We should be increase the renewable energies 14.65 %, up to 2020. The opportunity among the renewable energies available in Hungary largely lies in the utilization of biomass. This compressed energy has come into the purview of Europe and our country too. The EU market is ideal for wood pellet production. In Hungary, due to the characteristics of its agricultural industry, large amounts of herbaceous biomass are available. Straw and various agricultural by-products can be used as the raw materials for agripellets. Common complications of the various by-products used in pellet production are the ability to store and manage them, in addition to their combustion. Therefore, it is important to create pellets that will reduce the energy put into transportation and improve the combustion parameters. Despite the fact that we have the herbaceous raw material base, the agripellet production is only slowly developing in our country. One reason for this is that while we have various agripellet combustion furnaces and boilers, these systems are relatively expensive. In addition, due to the high ash content of herbaceous plants, it cannot be burned in wood pellet boilers. Furthermore, furnaces in the market are relatively few. However, Austria and a number of EU countries are helping with subsidies for the initial investment to make the changeover to pellet heating. In our studies, we dealt with the biodiesel production generated from the by-product of rapeseed stalk. After the grinding process, we produced rapeseed stalk pellets with a small pellet-making machine. Studies show that we can obtain a lot of energy from the rapeseed stalk. The location of the examination took place in T&T Technik Ltd. in Szentes. They are producing agripellets from different agricultural by-products. In the future, I would like to expand on energy balance research in the area of agripellet production.

The demand of biomass for energy production purposes will further increase over the coming years. For future attempts of implementing a sustainable energy system based on renewable energy carriers, agricultural residues are seen as a high-ranked option. This chapter presents background information for the biomass market in the European Union (EU), and the economic and ecological potential of straw as bioethanol feedstock is evaluated considering influencing factors for straw from being a residue to become a resource.

Barley straw was liquefied in fresh water and the aqueous phase obtained after liquefaction process at 300 °C. The effect of water recirculation on bio-oil yield and properties was investigated. Results showed that bio-oil yield increased gradually to 38.4 wt % with the addition of recycled aqueous phase. The bio-oil contained similar functional groups and had higher heating values in the range of 27.29–29.34 MJ/kg. It showed that aqueous phase can be utilized as an effective solvent.

This chapter presents a systematic approach for designing a palm-based symbiotic bioenergy park (SBP). In an SBP, material and energy exchanges among the processing facilities are facilitated to promote more sustainable operations in the palm oil industry. In this work, fuzzy optimisation is adapted to account for the individual economic interests of multiple parties in an SBP. The optimum network configuration which achieves the economic targets can be determined prior to detailed design.

Liquid biofuel was obtained by solvolytic liquefaction of lignocellulosic (LC) biomass in glycerol. Different types of wood, reaction temperatures and homogeneous catalysts were tested to obtain solvolytic oil with suitable fuel properties. Liquefaction conditions have little effect on fuel properties, so the upgrade step had to be introduced. Feasibility of hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) upgrading method using commercially available Ni, NiMo and Pd catalysts was investigated under elevated pressure and temperatures between 200 and 325 °C.

Sorption-enhanced processes of removing CO₂ maximize hydrogen production. In this work, three kinds of CO₂ sorbents were synthesized using a low supersaturation method and keeping the M²⁺/M³⁺ = 2/1 (M²⁺ = Mg, Ca and M³⁺ = Al). High- and low-temperature capture tests were carried out in a fluidized bed reactor and compared with thermogravimetric analysis. Differential thermal analysis was used to investigate the sorption behavior. Samples were characterized by means of Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET)Barrett–Joyner–Halenda (BJH), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM)energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) analysis.

Torrefaction is a well-known biomass pretreatment for energy densification and preservation enhancement, but continuous industrial plants are still rare. Pelletization, a well-known energy densification process as well, can be coupled with torrefaction in order to increase both energy density and water-resistivity of pellets. This chapter presents the use of a proven innovative technology coming from the food industry for biomass torrefaction before (pre-torrefaction) and after (post-torrefaction) the pelletization step. Several biomasses (wood chips, coniferous barks, olive pips, straw, and pine pellets) have been torrefied and analyzed. The choice between pre- and post-torrefaction is finally discussed.