Abstract

The development of energy efficient constructions is strongly stimulated by legislation requirements. Primary energy consumption reduction is one of the key objectives in European policies as confirmed by the Kyoto protocol and the target of 20-20-20. By 2020 all new buildings and buildings that are subject to renovation should have very low energy consumption, covered for the major part by renewable sources. There is still a wide range of non-technological barriers to overcome in order to reach a wide diffusion of the Zero Energy Building (ZEB) standard. First of all, extra initial costs are far from the construction business mind. Usually, both contractors and clients are mainly driven by short-term profit-making. They focus on the lowest price bidding and not on the added value that can be achieved implementing environmental friendly measures, which should be verified through Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) and intelligent Digital Prototyping (iDP). EnginSoft develops the BENIMPACT Suite (Building's ENvironmental IMPACT evaluator & optimizer), a tool for assessing and optimizing life cycle building performance in terms of energy consumption, comfort, costs and environmental impact. We have used the BENIMPACT Suite to study optimal configurations of windows and accessories, such as sun shadings, for standard private modular sustainable buildings to be sold in Nordic Countries.
The idea is that to increment the number of sustainable buildings (new or renewed ones), manufacturers should be able to prove that their "smart" solutions should be implemented not only because of a strictly and mandatory ZEB standard regulation, but because a better comfort can be achieved even with less green house gas emission and natural sources depletion.