Because of increasing public interest in ecological sustainable solutions, many terms and conditions were created in the last few years to support the use of energy-saving technology and sustainable products in the real estate branch. Fundamental are the national, Europe-wide and international laws, ordinances, norms and guidelines that specify energy efficiency standards for buildings and grounds. However, because laws and norms always represent only the minimum standard, due to how they originate and are elaborated, they do not reflect the energy potential possible for the construction industry under economic terms and conditions today.
Besides legal conditions, recently-established standards and international labels assess a building’s lifetime sustainability from a holistic angle. A building possessing all the attributes described therein and others more is called a green building. It combines high comfort level, optimal quality of use, minimised energy and water needs, and energy production that is as undamaging to the climate and resource-efficient as possible, while attending to economic and aesthetic considerations, with a payback period of five to fifteen years. Sustainability is hereby not limited to the building and its services. Everything from the choice of the lot to the dismantling and recyclability of its building materials is taken into consideration.

Minimising a building’s energy needs means coordinating its form and its envelope to its use and the climate. The orientation and the shape, the qualities of the building material, and the materials used, as well as the size and type of the transparent building parts and sun control system essentially determine the energy needs. Energy efficiency means optimising not only each individual system but also shaping the overall system of the building into an efficient unit. A homogenous interaction must result that allows the effective incorporation of sources of renewable energy. Real estate’s share of self-supplied energy, materials and water will largely determine its future lifecycle costs and consequently its intrinsic value.

Michael Bauer, Peter Mösle, Michael Schwarz are the authors of the book “Green Building: Konzepte für nachhaltige Architektur”, Callwey Verlag, Munich 2007.
German edition; English edition in preparation

Topos 60. Challenges. Water, food and energy need to be made available for a growing world population. In view of climate change and all the phenomena that go hand in hand with it, succeeding in doing so is a challenge for each and every one of us; see www.topos.de

Trackback URI | Comments RSS