Roadmap for positive-energy and low-carbon buildings and ...

Roadmap for positive-energy

and low-carbon buildings and building clusters

French Environment &Energy Management Agency

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Roadmap for positive-energy and low-carbon buildings and building clusters

Group of experts1

1 - The group of experts was assisted by a technical secretariat made up of Anne Grenier, Anne-Solène Malidin, Hélène Varlet, Rodolphe Morlot, Pierre Herant and Michel Gioria.

Nature of organisation Experts Affiliation

Private-sector corporations Eric PLANTIVE Claude RICAUD Louis-Paul FAURE Didier ROUX

EDF R&D Schneider Electric FAURE Ingénierie Saint-Gobain

Research organisations Jean-Paul DALLAPORTA Jean-Pierre TRAISNEL Bruno PEUPORTIER Philippe MALBRANCHE Philippe CHARTIER

PREBAT PIRVE-CNRS ENSMP CEA-INES Fondation Bâtiment

Trade group Roland FAUCONNIER FFB

Public organisations Pascal BAIN Hervé CHARRUE Marc FONTOYNONT Pierre HERANT Anne GRENIER Anne-Solène MALIDIN Hélène VARLET Rodolphe MORLOT Alain MORCHEOINE François MOISAN Michel GIORIA

ANR CSTB ENTPE ADEME ADEME ADEME ADEME ADEME ADEME ADEME ADEME

Contents

> 1. The scope of the roadmap 4

> 2. Issues at stake 6

> 3. Key parameters 8

> 4. Forward-looking visions 10

> 5. Bottlenecks 20

> 6. Research priorities 22

> 7. The need for research demonstrators 26

> 8. Bibliography 27

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Foreword

The French Environment and Energy Management Agency (ADEME) manages a fund dedicated to new energy technologies. Since 2008 this fund has funded “research demonstrators” to implement testing of technologies that are in an experimental stage, between research and industrial deployment. ADEME coordinates a group of experts who are charged with drawing up a strategic roadmap prior to each Call for Expressions of Interest.

The aims of these roadmaps are as follows:

•to highlight the industrial, technological, environmental and societal issues at stake;

•to elaborate coherent, consistent and shared visions of the technologies and/or socio-technical systems outlined in the roadmap;

•to underscore the technological, organisational and socioeconomic barriers and bottlenecks to be overcome in order to achieve these visions;

•to link priority research topics to a timetable of goals for technology availability and deployment that is consistent with the stated objectives;

•to give priority to research needs and research demonstrators that will serve as the basis for:

> calls for expression of interest issued by the Research Demonstrators Fund, > the research programming process at ADEME and more broadly at the Agence nationale de la recherche (ANR) and the Comité stratégique national sur la recherche sur l’énergie.

Research priorities and needs for demonstrators are determined by the intersection of visions and bottlenecks. They also take into account industrial and research capacity in France.

The roadmaps may also refer to exemplary research demonstrators abroad that are in the forefront of technological progress, and make recommendations regarding industrial policy.

These roadmaps are the result of collective work by a group of experts appointed by the Steering Committee (Comité de pilotage, COPIL) of the Research Demonstrators Fund for new energy technologies.

The members of this group are actors in research, drawn from industry, research bodies and research funding and programming agencies2.

2 - See list of experts page 2.

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> 1. The scope of the roadmap

Topics This roadmap covers:

• Improved energy performance for buildings, in terms of their use, equipment, envelope and construction techniques, both individually and on the scale of groups of buildings (see box below). Pooling energy needs and collective management of energy-producing and consuming equipment for a group of buildings are ways to optimise energy use. Buildings and complexes can also be a vector for energy storage, to recover waste energy, recharge electric and hybrid vehicles, and optimise energy systems on a building or multi-building scale.

Building clusters

Building complexes or clusters are groups of buildings, continuous or not, with varied uses or not (residential, institutional, commercial), that constitute a functional unit or neighbourhood district in terms of energy use, for pooling needs and energy production.

•Reduced carbon content (the amount of CO2 emitted over the entire life span of the building) and more broadly lower energy, environmental and health impacts for building components, design and construction. The objective is to achieve the smallest carbon footprint possible, renewable or natural-origin materials, minimum energy consumption during the life of the building, including demolition, deconstruction and recycling, as the case may be (see box below).

Deconstruction

Deconstruction is a process of demolition component by component, reversing the construction process. This approach makes it possible to partially dismantle buildings, if needed, and facilitates recycling of materials. Materials that are readily dismantled and suitable for deconstruction are characterised as “removable”, “reclaimable” or “salvageable”.

•The robust and reproducible nature of technological and organisational options, with optimal cost and quality criteria (see box below).

Robustness

Products and services are said to be robust if they are only marginally modified by outside conditions that cannot be controlled. One aspect of robustness for a positive-energy building could be the ability to maintain photovoltaic electricity generation when the sun goes behind a cloud.

•The circular economy, optimising energy and materials flows to bring industrial ecosystems closer to the cyclical functioning of natural ecosystems, applied at the building or building cluster scale to:

> develop new design approaches integrating options to reclaim, salvage and recycle components at the end of their useful life;

> enhance management of primary and secondary (dismantled and recycled) resources.

•Socioeconomic issues related to the emergence and large-scale deployment of positive-energy and low-carbon buildings and clusters. The roadmaps look at property management, legal, financial and social aspects as well as trends in the value systems associated with energy pooling, the acceptability of automated systems, requalification and re-attribution of building functions, among others.

This scope does not include:

•Technologies and business models for the development of smart electricity grids to enhance energy management and decentralised energy production. This area is explored in another strategic roadmap and call for expressions of interest devoted to smart grids and networks integrating renewable energy.

•Managing mobility for building and cluster occupants. This topic is studied in the roadmap and call for expressions of interest relating to transport of persons and goods.

Nonetheless the assessment of research and demonstrator projects drawn up for this roadmap may include criteria to incite project developers to include these two aspects — smart grids and transport for occupants — into their proposals.

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Geographic scope and time frameGeographic scope The analyses presented here are primarily situated in a national context (mainland France and French overseas departments and communities). Whenever relevant, however, local, European and international dimensions are introduced, for the purpose of:

•taking into account specific climate features, local construction practices and the range of natural resources that can be mobilised for building construction and thermal renovation work;

•articulating research priorities and the need for demonstrators with European initiatives, e.g. the European technological platform for construction, the Green Building segment of the European economic stimulus plant, and the Smart City industrial initiative (see the European strategic plan SET aimed at accelerating deployment of energy technologies);

•profiting from an international comparison of research priorities, demonstrator needs, industrial actors and their strategies (Germany, Japan, United States).

Time frame This study projects its analysis of positive-energy low-carbon buildings and clusters up to 2050, to align with Factor 4 objectives.

This objective, contained in French energy legislation passed in 2005 (Programme fixant les orientations de la politique énergétique, or POPE law) calls for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by three-quarters by 2050 compared to 1990.

These long-term visions are supplemented by a 2020 vision describing the situation attained if the objectives of the Grenelle environmental conference are fulfilled in the buildings sector. Various itineraries are proposed for meeting the Factor 4 goals by 2050.

Furthermore, the technological, organisational and socioeconomic options to be tested in research demonstrators should offer commercial deployment in or around 2020. This is one of the major differences between these demonstrators and the regional calls for projects related to “low-energy building demonstrators” launched under the building

energy research programme PREBAT3.

To pave the way between the short- and medium-term Grenelle objectives (up to 2010, 2012 and 2020) and the long-term vision developed in this roadmap (up to 2050) a tentative timetable of minimum positive-energy, low-carbon building regulations has been outlined for the period 2010-2025.

3 - See section VII on research demonstrator needs and the distinction between Demonstrator Fund and PREBAT projects.

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> 2. Issues at stake

The main challenges are to fulfil the Grenelle environmental objectives by 2020 and the Factor 4 goals by 2050. These goals are the founding principles that underpin the vision for the priorities, demonstrator needs and deployment of research.

In addition to these principles six critical issues are to be considered (the following list does not indicate order of importance):

Challenge 1Address the objectives of climate change mitigation4 and adaptation5 policies This will start at the building level and gradually expand to encompass clusters of buildings.

Technology is expected to improve energy performance. Institutions, socioeconomic and legal instruments will have to supplement and accompany this technological progress.

To ensure that the policy decisions made for buildings and climate change are the best ones, the conception, implementation and evaluation of building- and cluster-scale mitigation and adaptation policies will be particularly attentive to the notions of resilience6 and vulnerability7.

4 - Mitigation policies include all actions to reduce sources of greenhouse gases and/or augment sinks to absorb them.

5 - Adaptation policies aim to organise individual, corporate, institutional and government responses to today’s climate change and to anticipate future effects on the environment, the economy, on health, on daily life and on society at large.

6 - In this context resilience refers to the capacity of a building or group of buildings to return to normal operation and development after a period of natural (long-term drought, heat wave) or economic (speculation, devaluation) stresses.

7 - The degree of risk incurred by buildings in relation to harmful climate change effects. Building vulnerability depends on the type, amplitude and pace of climate change to which the construction is exposed, and on sensitivity to these changes and capacity to adapt.

Challenge 2Build up ambitious commercial offers for component installation and maintenance in new building construction and for energy rehabilitation of existing buildings

This action involves deployment of innovative components and component packages (see box below).

This innovation will:

•take the diversity of the built environment into account,

•contribute to structuring industrial activity that will create jobs and “green growth”,

•help hold down production and deployment costs, all else being equal, to foster mass dissemination,

•accelerate deployment of innovative components and packages by restricting the number of small actors and coordinating their action.

Component packages

Component packages are sets of technological and economic solutions for energy rehabilitation of existing buildings. Each package is designed for the specific needs of a type of construction (19th-century “Haussmann” apartment buildings in Paris, one-family detached or semi-detached homes in suburban developments, etc.).

Issues to achievepositive-energy and low carbon buildings

and building clusters

Climate change mitigationand adaptation

Build up ambitious offersfor technological components

Anticipate and preventadverse effects

of better energy performance

Develop tolls to assess, monitor,control and guide performance

in new and existing building

Address cross-sectorial, economic, financial and technical aspectsof the build environment

Take social behaviors, value systemsand regulations into account

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Challenge 3Address cross-sectoral societal, economic, financial and technical aspects of the built environment

These societal, economic and technical issues span energy poverty, mobility, social diversity, socio-spatial equity, population ageing as well as regulation of natural and technological risks, accessibility for persons with limited mobility, advanced energy performance, investment financing and guaranteed results.

By integrating these aspects into buildings via technology design, development and deployment, and public policy tools and organisations for energy rehabilitation it will be possible to:

•enhance the probability of effective and large-scale deployment of technological, organisational and socioeconomic options, among others by preventing individual and collective rejection of the NIMBY sort8;

• help all actors in the value chain progressively adopt these technological, organisational and socioeconomic options by

2020, so as to avoid the “elevator syndrome”9;

•make public policy pertaining to the building/climate change interface more pertinent and effective.

As far as economic issues are concerned, the financial constraints weighing on households, industrial companies and local authorities are clearly a major factor that will affect not only the pace of deployment of technological, organisational and socioeconomic options, but the very nature of these options as well. Luxury solutions for new and existing construction, reserved for the well-to-do or for a small number of buildings, must be avoided.

8 - NIMBY stands for Not in My Back Yard and designates a political or ethical position held by individuals or neighbourhood associations that refuse major changes regarded as harmful impacts in their immediate vicinity.

9 - The “elevator syndrome” refers to a situation in which regulations were adopted in France that created a long-term impasse for elevator companies, leading to rising repair costs and a simultaneous drop in quality.

Challenge 4Take social behaviours, value systems and regulations into account

It is of fundamental importance to keep in view the behaviours and value systems that are the framework of reference in today’s society. The evolution of this framework will determine, to a greater or lesser extent:

•the effectiveness of the technological options deployed: all or some of the energy gains tied to the introduction of more efficient technology or systems can be cancelled out by changes in the ways these technologies, or the goods and services that incorporate them, are used. This is known as the rebound effect and its impact has to be circumscribed;

•trends in “life style” that will determine full or partial deployment of the visions put forth, e.g. pooling of appliances, energy production and distribution systems, cohousing (individual property ownership with some spaces commonly owned).

Challenge 5Anticipate and prevent adverse effects of better energy performance in buildings and building clusters

These are primarily: indoor air quality, quality of life and use, localised climate effects, notably heat islands in urban settings (zones where local temperatures rise in comparison to a wider vicinity), sizing and operation of energy distribution networks.

It is also important to reduce the overall environmental impact of buildings in the design phases of new construction, to limit consumption of materials, or when rehabilitating existing buildings, by incorporating the notions of deconstruction and recycling.

Application and development of these multi-criteria goals is appropriate, in the first instance for research demonstrator projects, and then later for energy rehabilitation in buildings and clusters.

Challenge 6Develop tools to assess, monitor, control and guide performance in new and existing buildings so as to monitor and oversee the building trends

This challenge addresses ways to track and control building performance over time. It is not necessarily connected to commercial equipment offerings.

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> 3. Key parameters In addition to building type (apartment buildings, detached or semi-detached homes), architecture and local features (climate zone, construction materials), two factors are likely to significantly affect the deployment of technological, organisational and socioeconomic options that are associated with positive-energy low-carbon buildings and clusters:

•the object or spatial scale to which the notion of positive energy is applied,

•the proportion of rehabilitation and large-scale construction of new high-energy-performance buildings (along with deconstruction) in the effort to achieve the desired transformation.

Pertinent spatial scale for positive energy Looking beyond the building In the built environment the notion of positive energy refers to a building that on average produces more energy than it consumes over a given period of time, generally a year.

This definition means that at certain times in the year the building consumes energy. In this case several options are available: storage mechanisms, connection to a distribution grid, or both.

The forward-looking thinking developed in this roadmap was initially applied on the scale of single buildings, but the concept of positive energy can be extended beyond this scale to the scale of a group or cluster of buildings, exploiting the following parameters:

•energy criteria to be optimised, including the overall energy efficiency of various alternative energy options, energy efficiency gains, mobilisation of local and renewable energy resources;

Technology options according to the spatial scale of the positive energy concept

Spatial scale Use and function to be satisfied Characteristics of technological options to be mobilised

Single building Envelope and energy management technologies

Multifunctional envelope ensuring insulation, renewable energy production ( solar, photovoltaic or thermal), ventilation, energy storage, etc, and its properties (openings, solar protection, air intake, etc.) can be piloted and coordinated with an individual «smart» system to manage accumulated heat in the building

Energy production equipment Principally renewable energy installations (wood, solar thermal and photovoltaics, heat pump, etc.) integrated into the building.

Storage technologies In fully or partially autonomous buildings, individual storage capacity (stationary or mobile) adapted to occupants’ needs and uses.

Clusters Envelope and energy management technologies

Envelope improvements are still a priority, but are coordinated with an energy optimisation strategy on the scale of a group of buildings or a neighbourhood. This justifies installing devices to pool and collectively manage energy across all the buildings.

Energy production equipment Pooling of energy production, e.g. heat networks or low-temperature geothermal installations, and network management, in particular of power grids, to control energy demand and integrate decentralised energy production, are a top priority.

Storage technologies Energy is not stored on a building scale, but on the scale of several buildings. Technological options are expected to provide large-capacity storage of heat and electricity.

Drivers forpositive-energy buildings

and building clusters

Pertinent spatial scale for positive energy

Proportion of new and existing construction in the transformation

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•socioeconomic criteria: thinking on the scale of a group of buildings makes it possible to integrate technologies such as local energy networks or energy storage, which are more economically attractive. Energy pooling on the cluster scale offers better cost effectiveness compared to energy rehabilitation of individual buildings. In a similar way, it is possible to take advantage of the asynchronous needs of buildings and end consumers that are the result of changes in the life style of different population segments, and the social and functional diversity of spaces.

Ultimately the cluster scale is appropriate because the concept of positive energy may be difficult to achieve in existing buildings separately, where full energy rehabilitation may be impeded by factors such as orientation or geographic location that are not favourable for photovoltaic panels, or limited possibilities for installing a heat pump or exterior insulation.

Spatial scales and technological, organisational and socioeconomic options The spatial scale of positive energy has a strongly discriminating effect for the technological, organisational and socioeconomic options to be conceived, developed and deployed (see table below).

Positive energy in building complexes implies managing collective energy production equipment and energy-consuming devices. If this is executed by an outside vendor the applicable business model is a core issue.

Pooling of production and consumption must also reflect needs and uses according to building occupation: schedules and needs are different depending on building use (school, housing, offices). These differences offer room for synergies and possibilities for smoothing consumption to eliminate peaks and size equipment more appropriately.

While our societies and cities were founded on the pooling of needs and resources, the pooling of energy consumption on the level of household appliances, as commonly practised in some countries (Austria, United States, among others) is for the most part unheard of in France. This practice calls into question the scale of values and individualisation of our society.

Proportion of new and existing construction in the transformation Achieving Factor 4 goals in buildings is possible, with:

•massive rehabilitation of existing building stock,

•A simultaneous policy of deconstruction of existing buildings and construction of new buildings with very high energy performance characteristics.

These factors will have a particularly strong impact on the deployment of technological, organisational and socioeconomic options.

Three complementary factors Beyond the spatial scale of positive energy and the sharing of transformation between new and existing buildings, the vision of research demonstrators and analysis of bottlenecks and research priorities must explicitly reflect:

•the nature and possible evolution of social organisations and regulations: Regulations must allow for liberty of choice, and recourse to service vendors must not impede social self-organisation;

•arbitration between predominantly technological solutions (optimised interior energy management, smart envelope) and predominantly behavioural solutions (information services enabling users to shift electricity consumption and/or consume less);

•the way in which new or rehabilitated buildings are integrated in the built environment, from an energy standpoint (orientation, use of local resources, consideration of local climate, insertion in an existing cluster, and more broadly in the existing energy system, including district heating, electricity transmission and distribution grids).

Generally speaking, the location of the six million or so housing units that will be built in France between now and 2050, in urban, peri-urban or rural areas, and their characteristics, including organisation of interior spaces, parking availability etc. will have an impact of variable proportions on:

•the evolution of the urban fabric in terms of population density, for instance if the urban and peri-urban areas of major cities become more dense, or if multifunctional spaces that associate housing, work and leisure become more common;

•the energy balance of clusters and neighbourhoods and more generally on the technological, organisational and socioeconomic options available for energy production and consumption (e.g. district heating or centralised production using photovoltaic panels, pooling vs. individual ownership of energy-consuming appliances such as washing machines);

•relevant options for energy rehabilitation of existing buildings in the vicinity of new positive-energy buildings (e.g. pooling energy between buildings, collective energy management to take advantage of staggered times of use);

•the business models to be designed to finance the energy rehabilitation of existing buildings and the construction of new positive-energy buildings.

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> 4. Forward-looking visions

Long-term visions are meant to represent different ways in which technological, organisational and socioeconomic options might be deployed to achieve Factor 4 goals in the residential and commercial building sectors, sometimes with exaggeration.

These views do not claim to predict the future as it will be in 2050, but rather they seek to circumscribe the scope of what is possible, to point out a broad set of bottlenecks, research priorities and needs for research demonstrators. Actual circumstances will most likely be a combination of the four 2050 visions drawn up by the group of experts in this roadmap. The experts also decided to introduce a medium-term vision, for 2020.

This vision is intended to:

•describe the way in which the objectives of the Grenelle environmental conference could be pursued in the buildings sector and extended through the period 2020-2050;

•underscore the room for flexibility as well as the irreversible effects regarding the technological, organisational and socioeconomic options that could be deployed in 2050 in the buildings sector if the Grenelle objectives were attained.

The 2020 vision How can the Grenelle environmental objectives be achieved by 2020 in the residential sector which represents more than 70% of heated surface area (2 300 million m²)?

All new buildings are positive-energy structures. If this policy is pursued up to 2050 roughly six million new positive-energy housing units would be built.

As for existing residential buildings, a vast energy refurbishment programme is undertaken, involving roughly 400 000 housing units per year up to 2020. The aim of this programme is to deliver housing with energy consumption levels approaching 80 kWh/m²/year. Some 4.4 million existing units would be refurbished during the period 2010-2020. Pursuing this pace between 2020 and 2050 another 12.4 million units would be upgraded in terms of energy use. All in all a total of 16.8 existing housing units would be rehabilitated by 2050.

Grenelle environmental objectives in the residential sector and consequences of pur suing Grenelle objectives between 2020 and 2050

Residential buildings

Grenelle objectives for 2020

Extending Grenelle objectives between 2020 and 2050

New buildings All new buildings are net energy producers, between 200 000 and 400 000 new positive-energy units by 2020

Some 6 million new positive-energy units are built between 2020 and 2050; roughly 16% of housing units are net energy producers in 2050.

Existing buildings Energy refurbishment of some 4.4 million existing units between 2010 and 2020. Average energy consumption of refurbished units does not exceed 80 kWh/m²/year.

About 12.4 million units will be refurbished between 2020 and 2050, adding up to 16.8 million homes refurbished between 2010 and 2050 (47% of housing stock in 2050).

Source: Experts group, based on findings of the Grenelle environmental conference

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In 2050 some 10 million residential housing units, or about 36% of housing stock at that date, would still not have received any large-scale energy upgrade. Even when pursued beyond 2020 the Grenelle objectives are not sufficient, and more ambitious goals must be set if the Factor 4 objective is to be attained in the residential sector by 2050.

The Grenelle conference did not set any specific objectives, either for construction or the pace of refurbishment, for the commercial sector which today represents close to 30% of heated surface area, roughly 900 million m². Despite the renewal rate for commercial buildings, higher than for residential buildings, it can be estimated that 60% of the commercial building stock of 2050 had already been built in 2008.

In conclusion it will most probably be necessary to strengthen the Grenelle environmental objectives after 2020 to attain the Factor 4 reduction in the buildings sector (residential and commercial/institutional). This will mean setting ambitious objectives for energy refurbishment and rehabilitation in existing commercial/institutional building stock.

Four options offer ways to attain the Factor 4 objective:

•option 1: accelerate the pace of energy refurbishment in existing residential and commercial building stock;

•option 2: raise the performance level to be achieved via energy refurbishment in existing buildings, for example setting primary energy consumption at a level well below 50 kWh/m²/year;

•option 3: ensure substantial new construction and positive-energy buildings, including an ambitious policy for deconstruction and rebuilding of existing residential and commercial buildings;

•option 4: recover residual energy produced by positive-energy buildings, on a building cluster scale.

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The 2050 vision How can each of these four options be translated into action? The visions elaborated below are built around two key parameters:

•the scale on which the positive energy concept is applied — building, complex or neighbourhood,

•proportion of transformation effort between existing stock and new buildings.

The Factor 4 objective will not be attained in 2050 by focusing exclusively on new or on existing buildings, but via work in both sectors.

Summary of visions for achieving positive-energy and low-carbon residential and commercial buildings by 2050

Building scale Building cluster/ neighbourhood scale

Focus on existing residential and commercial building stock

Vision 1: massive energy refurbishment, building by building

Vision 2: massive energy rehabilitation, optimised at the complex or neighbourhood scale

Focus on new residential and commercial buildings

Vision 3: New high-end buildings, rehabilitation or even massive deconstruction of existing stock

Vision 4: Masdar City10 — massive deconstruction and rebuilding of existing stock

Vision 1: massive energy refurbishment, building by building All existing residential and commercial/institutional buildings are largely rehabilitated, to transform the most recent constructions into positive-energy buildings, and attain consumption levels under 50 kWh/m²/year for the others.

Energy refurbishment is carried out building by building, without consideration of possible energy interaction between buildings. However certain homogeneous families of residential or commercial buildings — ”Haussmann”-type apartment buildings, office buildings, workers’ houses — are treated as energy refurbishment ensembles, with a set of options that is suited to each type of building.

This approach brings down costs and hence significantly accelerates the pace of refurbishment compared to the trend observed for 2010-2020, resulting in the refurbishment of over 400 000 housing units per year in the residential sector.

Positive-energy buildings are designed for efficient energy consumption and use the electricity they generate in an optimum way, choosing between immediate use, local storage or sale to the power grid. The first objective is a building that is autonomous for all its energy uses. Next comes sale of excess power to the grid, than local storage in the form of recharging electric vehicles. Sophisticated energy management systems are deployed to optimise internal load as a function of building occupants’ habits and fluctuating local energy production.

10 - Masdar City is a model ecological city, designed to operation without carbon emissions and without waste. The project was conceived by the firm Foster and Partners in response to a competition launched in 2006 for the creation of a new city on 6.5 km² in the desert near the international airport of Abou Dhabi. The proposed city includes bioclimatic urban architecture, multifunctional environmentally friendly and efficient transport systems, control of water resources and use, optimum waste recycling, and large-scale exploitation of solar energy to meet the city’s needs.

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Vision 2: massive energy refurbishment, optimised at the complex or neighbourhood scale This vision is similar to the preceding one, differing only in that energy rehabilitation is planned :

•to give the best results at the building cluster or neighbourhood scale,

•to leave room for flexibility, to facilitate future technological progress such as the large-scale deployment of plug-in electric or hybrid vehicles, and smart electricity grids.

The main idea is to use the energy characteristics of low-energy and positive-energy buildings to optimise energy refurbishment in existing construction in groups of buildings or a neighbourhood. “Energy cooperation” or “energy pooling” is used to upgrade the energy performance of refurbished buildings, in particular their use of solar energy.

Energy interaction and synergies between residential and commercial buildings are also sought, to make the most of different use profiles: energy exchange, of heat for example, is one possible solution.

Along the same lines, energy equipment, such as heating or cooling networks, are joined up at the building cluster or neighbourhood level with centralised storage facilities and smart distribution networks. Electric vehicle charging facilities are also planned for collective use.

Energy equipment is designed to allow for future change, whether it be technological evolution, such as replacing cogeneration units with hydrogen fuel cells in 2040, social changes such as shifting demographics and new needs, or climate modifications, calling for more air conditioning, for instance.

This vision at the neighbourhood scale offers a balance between optimisation and adaptability.

Légende

Low performance energy buidings

Positive energy buildings

Contribution to the positive energy buildings for the low performance energy buildings

Before After

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Vision 3: New high-end buildings, rehabilitation or even massive deconstruction of existing stock New buildings with particularly high performance standards are built using the most innovative technologies, but at high cost. Given the low renewal rate for housing stock and the limited scope of new construction (six million new units between 2020 and 2050 in the residential sector), an ambitious policy for existing housing must be enacted in order to attain the Factor 4 goal.

A significant number of existing residential and commercial/institutional buildings are targeted under this policy, which includes two options: extensive rehabilitation, when possible (depending on location, orientation, building architecture, occupants’ income, etc.), otherwise deconstruction and rebuilding to transform the units into high-performance positive-energy buildings. The choice between these two options is made on the basis of environmental criteria, in particularly grey energy (embodied energy), which is the sum of all energy required for production, manufacture, use and ultimately recycling of industrial materials and products. Stricter regulations in this domain must be enacted earlier than for visions 1 and 2 above.

In this vision buildings with high energy performance — eserved for a well-to-do segment of the population — coexist with less advanced construction of all types, housing, offices, schools or shops.

Storage systems for electricity, heat and cooling potential are integrated into buildings to balance energy production and consumption, whether on a daily basis or annually. In parallel, high-performance residential and commercial/institutional buildings are able to sell their excess energy production to distribution networks, to meet the energy needs of buildings only partially refurbished or rehabilitated. These energy distribution networks are operated with smart tools, applying dynamic tariffs, for instance, to make the most of market opportunities. Energy sales are the core strategy in the business model that enables construction of new buildings.

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Vision 4: Masdar City — massive deconstruction and rebuilding of existing stock In this vision actors in urban planning and government undertake a massive urban renewal policy: sections and neighbourhoods of old buildings are deconstructed so that building clusters and neighbourhoods with high energy and environmental performance can be built in their stead, creating new low-energy or even positive-energy cities and eco-estates.

In most cases these are designed to optimise local energy use, but to ensure secure supply they are also connected to central energy distribution grids.

These rebuilt spaces function according to the principles of the circular economy, seeking to bring industrial ecosystems closer to the cyclical functioning of natural ecosystems by rationalising energy and material flows. In eco-estates consumption and recycling of resources and materials are given careful attention during deconstruction and rebuilding phases. As in the preceding vision, strict upstream regulation of grey energy must be instituted to find the best balance between deconstruction/rebuilding and massive refurbishment/rehabilitation.

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Summary The tables below summarise and complete the main strengths and weaknesses of the four visions for 2050 that are proposed here, along with their principal characteristics, differentiating features and key actors.

Main strengths and weakness of the different visions

Vision Strengths Weaknesses


- Does not call into question existing organisations and ways of thinking

- Emergence of energy refurbishment ensembles and ambitious offers for building-scale energy rehabilitation

- Does not call into question existing organisations and ways of thinking

- Business models to be created

Vision 2: massive energy rehabilitation, optimised at the cluster or neighbourhood scale

- Strong interaction with creation of smart electricity grids

- Better optimisation of projected technical solutions

- Need to create transaction models suited to notions of energy pooling and cooperation

- Need to find service vendors for energy rehabilitation at the building cluster or neighbourhood scale


- Decision mechanisms are more explicit because a limited number of actors are involved in decision making

- Strong interaction with creation of smart electricity grids

- Business models virtually exist due to the strong interaction with smart grids

- Need for clear coordination with the urban planning code

- Weak social dimension Energy performance is reserved for the well-to-do

- Significant questioning of our relationship to the existing built environment and patrimony

- Need to deploy eco-building techniques to limit environmental impacts, particularly as regards raw materials

Vision 4: Masdar City — massive deconstruction and rebuilding of existing stock

- Requires reflection on Factor 4 and post-carbon cities

- Technology models can be exported to emerging countries

- City models (like Masdar City) can be imported from emerging countries

- Radical questioning of our relationship to the existing built environment and patrimony

- Materials- and resource-intensive if deconstruction and rebuilding are not well managed

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11 - Renewable energy and energy storage aggregators are enterprises that pool decentralised energy resources (wind turbines, photovoltaic plants, hydropower reserves) to build up a significant resource that can be marketed.

Main characteristics – differentiating features of the different visions

Vision Differentiating features compared to the other visions Key actors


Energy optimisation thought out at the building scale

Actors providing advanced and competitive offers for building energy refurbishment and rehabilitation

Vision 2: massive energy rehabilitation, optimised at the cluster or neighbourhood scale

Energy optimisation thought out at the building cluster scale

Energy service companies offer energy refurbishment/rehabilitation contracts on a building cluster or neighbourhood scale


Building seen as a small energy plant The business model for this building lies in its interaction with the energy distribution network (e.g. network services)

Actors in smart electricity grids (suppliers, aggregators11, etc.)

Vision 4: Masdar City — massive deconstruction and rebuilding of existing stock

Achieving Factor 4 goals becomes a way of rethinking cities, going beyond energy issues: innovative options are deployed for the circular economy, urban metabolism and management of mobility and transport

Builders, major public works and urban services companies, city planners

Source: Experts group

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2010-2050 Transition: key elements for successive thermal regulations The evolution of regulatory texts has become a key element driving innovation in the buildings sector, as in the automobile industry (see European standards for vehicle exhaust emissions). Labels such as Bâtiment basse consommation (BBC) and Bâtiment à énergie positive (BEPOS) and successive thermal regulations (RT 2005) have set the pace.

Against this backdrop we outline a possible timetable of regulatory increments leading up to 2050, paced separately for new construction and for existing buildings. Different elements corresponding to the 2020 vision and to the four 2050 visions are introduced progressively.

The aims of this timetable are:

•progressive extension of the positive energy concept to all energy uses in residential and commercial buildings, such as heating and ventilation;

• integration of the notion of life cycle analysis (LCA) in residential and commercial building design, to take grey energy into account in situations of large-scale rehabilitation, deconstruction and rebuilding;

•extension of the positive energy concept from single buildings to clusters or neighbourhoods.

The research demonstrators stemming from this roadmap will allow experimentation in real-life conditions to test the technological, organisation and socioeconomic conditions prefiguring a new label: Haute Performance Environnementale 2025 (HPE 2025). This label is distinct from the PREBAT regional demonstrators that will prefigure the technological options for a HPE 2012 label.

For major energy rehabilitation of existing building stock, the proposed pace of new regulations is as follows:

•slight delay in application of energy performance and environmental impact standards on the single building scale: the step up to the notion of positive energy will come later, restricted to certain uses, with less ambitious aims with regard to carbon content;

•scale shift from single buildings to clusters at the same time.

12 - The notion of carbon content is taken broadly here, to encompass the CO2 content of electricity consumed for different uses, for production of materials and for equipment used for and in these devices.

Proposed timetable for building regulations leading up to the 2050 visions

Time frame Main regulatory objectives

2011-2013 HPE 2012 Label: positive-energy buildings (BEPOS) for five regulated electricity uses — heating, ventilation, cooling, sanitary hot water, lighting and auxiliary uses Requirements introduced for carbon content (threshold) and use of natural materials, in particular for building envelope

2015-2016 HPE 2016 Label: BEPOS concept extended to other electricity uses such as specific electricity — household appliances, information technology, office equipment, etc. LCA benchmarks for carbon content introduced in regulations12. For the first time positive energy concept extended from single buildings to clusters or neighbourhoods HPE 2016 label prefigures 2020 thermal regulations (RT 2020)

2020 RT 2020: HPE 2016 Label standards become mandatory

2020-2025 HPE 2025 Label: corresponds to extension of BEPOS to all energy uses in single buildings, and in clusters or neighbourhoods as well Application of LCA benchmarks for carbon content, environmental and health impacts is validated For the first time specific benchmarks are set with reference to the building cluster scale

2030 RT 2030: HPE 2025 Label standards become mandatory

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The main levers for action in the different visions Five levers of action can be used to achieve, jointly or severally, the 2050 visions imagined by the group of experts (given here without order of importance).

•Lever 1: optimisation of energy use on the building or cluster scale via interior and exterior insulation, daylighting to reduce lighting needs, reduction of hot water use. Depending on building orientation, architectural and energy characteristics, optimisation of heating and cooling needs could be achieve by energy pooling and cooperation between buildings.

•Lever 2: building energy management for dynamic control of various envelope components such as apertures, active glass (variable transparency).

•Lever 3: individual and collective behaviour with respect to energy consumption and general life style to avoid the rebound effect of uses that consume more energy and thereby cancel out all or some of the gains expected from a new and better technology. Educational measures and incentives such as tax breaks are recognised as tools that are effective in the long term.

•Lever 4: energy performance of equipment and appliances, in particular lighting (LEDs, OLEDs) and cooking appliances, refrigerators, washing machines, video equipment etc., for which energy efficiency can and must be improved. Knowing that in the medium term (10 to 20 years) the number of appliances in use will continue to grow, pooling between housing units and even buildings will be an option to be explored.

•Lever 5: energy production and recovery equipment using technologies for renewable electricity generation, (photovoltaic panels) and for solar hot water.

Different degrees of progress can be imagined for these levers. The table below shows orders of magnitude for gains that can be expected by 2050.

NB: the estimated ranges are largely dependent on the energy characteristics of the building(s) at the outset. Energy refurbishment of a low-energy building will produce few gains in the building envelope, and greater progress in terms of energy-producing and consuming equipment and devices. The inverse will be true for buildings built prior to the first implementation of thermal regulations.

Breakdown of gains to be expected from different levers of action

Type of use kWh/m²/year

Lever 1: Envelope

Lever 2: Controls

Lever 3: Consumer behaviour

Lever 4: Equipment

Lever 5: Renewable energy

Heating/cooling

Lighting

Motors

Hot water

Appliances (kitchen, Hi-fi, multimedia

Source: Schneider Electric. Legend - White: no expected gains. Green: 0–20% gains. Orange: 20–50% gains. Red: >50% gains.

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> 5. Bottlenecks

The emergence of the 2020 and 2050 visions will depend on the resolution of a number of technological, economic, organisational and cross-sectoral barriers and bottlenecks.

Technological bottlenecks •Bottleneck 1.1: development of technological components

and integrated sets of components for energy rehabilitation of buildings (e.g. multifunctional envelope that serves as a wall but also as insulation and solar panel, with variable and controllable properties; systems to pool energy production and consumption between buildings; thin-film exterior insulation; facade renovation using nano particles).

•Bottleneck 1.2: building integration of decentralised or semi-decentralised production and storage technologies, on the facade or roof, among others.

•Bottleneck 1.3: validation of the energy and economic advantages of energy synergy options such as thermal energy recovery on hot and cold streams, shared energy infrastructure, energy interfaces between vehicles and buildings.

•Bottleneck 1.4: sizing of energy production systems such as heat pumps, wood boilers, cogeneration systems for individual and collective applications.

Economic and industrial bottlenecks •Bottleneck 2.1: lack of involvement on the part of large

industrial companies for integrated systems, whether on the building scale or a multi-building scale (clusters, neighbourhoods).

•Bottleneck 2.2: development of inexpensive ambitious market offers for components and integrated sets of components for large-scale energy refurbishment and rehabilitation of buildings or groups of buildings.

•Bottleneck 2.3: economic benefits of enhanced energy performance for buildings, particularly for arbitrating between refurbishment/rehabilitation and demolition/rebuilding.

•Bottleneck 2.4: organisational constraints of the construction value chain that today does not sufficiently emphasise the continuity between products, value chains and labour in its approach to product and service design.

Socio economic, legal and organisational bottlenecks •Bottleneck 3.1: preservation of resilience and capacity to

adapt to future financial constraints, climate change and regulatory trends, as well as to technological progress.

•Bottlenecks: conception of business models associated with the emergence of new activities tied to development of rehabilitation services at building and building cluster scales.

•Bottleneck 3.3: acceptability of smart energy management (with constraints) that integrates controls and command mechanisms, automated systems, communicating and even persuasive interfaces.

•Bottleneck 3.4: behaviour of final users in reaction to emergence of products and services along with deployment of these new buildings.

•Bottleneck 3.5: interaction between adoption of new products and services, and changes in final users’ behaviour.

•Bottleneck 3.6: absence of legal and institutional rules to underpin energy pooling and sharing between buildings or within a single building (e.g. regulatory framework to allow construction of a greenhouse between two buildings, building permits and local urban planning documents that cover clusters involving both new construction and rehabilitation).

•Bottleneck 3.7: compatibility between technological options envisioned and urban and architectural constraints.

Cross-sector bottlenecks •Bottleneck 4.1: reliability and security of information

systems to improve management and anticipation of energy consumption within a building or group of buildings (for the purpose of piloting uses and holding down demand).

•Bottleneck 4.2: capacity of information systems for energy demand anticipation and management to operate in safe mode, i.e. ensure minimum service in the event of failure of a component.

•Bottleneck 4.3: robustness of technological, organisation and socioeconomic options designed and deployed for buildings and building clusters.

•Bottleneck 4.4: carbon footprint and overall global impact assessment of the technological, organisational and socioeconomic options deployed in new construction as well as in the existing built environment.

•Bottleneck 4.5: real-life performance, in other words the divergence between theoretical calculations and predictions and actual energy performance and consumption, and the gap between optimal operating conditions and the non-optimal and disparate behaviour of users.

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Bottlenecks in relation to different levers for action

Lever for action Bottlenecks

Energy optimisation at the building and building cluster scale

Bottleneck 1.1: development of technological components and integrated sets of components for energy rehabilitation of buildings

Bottleneck 1.3: validation of the energy and economic advantages of energy synergy options such as thermal energy recovery on hot and cold streams, shared energy infrastructure, energy interfaces between vehicles and buildings

Bottleneck 1.4: sizing of energy production systems such as heat pumps, wood boilers, cogeneration systems for individual and collective applications

Bottleneck 2.1: lack of involvement on the part of large industrial companies for integrated systems, whether on the building scale or a multi-building scale (clusters, neighbourhoods)

Bottleneck 2.2: development of inexpensive ambitious commercial offers for components and integrated sets of components for large-scale energy refurbishment and rehabilitation of buildings or groups of buildings.

Bottleneck 2.3: economic benefits of enhanced energy performance for buildings, particularly for arbitrating between refurbishment/rehabilitation and demolition/rebuilding.

Bottleneck 2.4: organisational constraints of the construction value chain that today does not sufficiently emphasise the continuity between products, value chains and labour in its approach to product and service design.

Bottleneck 3.1: preservation of resilience and capacity to adapt to future financial constraints, climate change and regulatory trends, as well as to technological progress

Bottleneck 3.2: conception of business models associated with the emergence of new activities tied to development of rehabilitation services at building and building cluster scales.

Bottleneck 4.4: carbon footprint and overall global impact assessment of the technological, organisational and socioeconomic options deployed in new construction as well as in the existing built environment.

Building controls and energy management systems

Bottleneck 4.1: reliability and security of information systems to improve management and anticipation of energy consumption within a building or group of buildings (for the purpose of piloting uses and holding down demand).

Bottleneck 4.2: capacity of information systems for energy demand anticipation and management to operate in safe mode, i.e. ensure minimum service in the event of failure of a component.

Bottleneck 4.3: robustness of technological, organisation and socioeconomic options designed and deployed for buildings and building clusters

Individual and collective energy consumption and overall life styles

Bottleneck 3.3: acceptability of smart energy management (with constraints) that integrates controls and command mechanisms, automated systems, communicating and even persuasive interfaces

Bottleneck 3.4: behaviour of final users in reaction to emergence of products and services along with deployment of these new buildings

Bottleneck 3.5: interaction between adoption of new products and services, and changes in final users’ behaviour

Bottleneck 3.6: absence of legal and institutional rules to underpin energy pooling and sharing between buildings or within a single building

Bottleneck 3.7: compatibility between technological options envisioned and urban and architectural constraints

Bottleneck 4.5: real-life performance, in other words the divergence between theoretical calculations and predictions and actual energy performance and consumption, and the gap between optimal operating conditions and the non-optimal and disparate behaviour of users

Energy efficiency of equipment and appliances

Bottleneck 1.4: sizing of energy production systems such as heat pumps, wood boilers, cogeneration systems for individual and collective applications

Energy production and recovery technologies

Bottleneck 1.2: building integration of decentralised or semi-decentralised production and storage technologies, on the facade or roof, among others

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> 6. Research priorities

Buildings and building clusters Technological approaches and systems These improvements involve the building envelope. In the short term the R&D objective must be to enhance the energy efficiency of building envelope components. This research should:

•upgrade from over-insulation to thin-film superinsulation. There is much at stake here, given the extent of the need for thermal refurbishment in existing buildings,

•correct and prevent thermal bridges,

• improve coupling of insulation and inertia,

•control air and humidity transfers via walls.

To accelerate dissemination to builders, this research must aim for construction materials that can be easily integrated into builders’ standardised approaches.

In the medium term the envelope should no longer be only a passive interface between the inside and the outside. It will also have to be intelligent. It will have to have the capacity to interact with users and their needs, and with the surrounding environment, both directly and by anticipation.

This new conception of the envelope is based on integration of materials and advanced components, such as:

•adaptive insulation materials to shield from cold and take advantage of solar gains,

•phase-change materials to store energy, reduce consumption and enhance comfort,

•active and selective glazing, that insulates, produces energy via photovoltaic cells, and filters sunlight to avoid glare,

•sensors to monitor the condition of envelope components.

The intelligent envelope will also produce energy through solar panels, photovoltaic cells or micro-wind turbines on the facade or the roof. These renewable energy systems must be designed to be integrated into the building envelope.

To achieve integration of components, whether active or passive, it will be necessary to develop functional subassemblies that are easy to manufacture and prebuild on an industrial scale. These products will be suited to standardised procedures to enable rapid uptake of these new design paradigms by builders in their daily practice.

In the long term the transition from a passive structure to an active envelope is likely to guide upstream research work to find materials with new thermal and mechanical characteristics. In this respect research on nanomaterials, organic and composite materials could offer find a wide range of applications in construction, and should be encouraged starting today.

Energy equipment

Ventilation systemsIn the short and medium term ventilation systems will have to be upgraded, in terms of double flow, room-by-room control when necessary, and combination with natural ventilation. In the longer term ventilation systems should be transformed into air management systems, including sensors to detect the presence of persons, pollutants and smoke, and capable of informing users of indoor air quality. This equipment should be able to regulate air flows and preheat or precool incoming air. To address comfort issues in summertime solutions must be proposed to make use nocturnal ventilation.

Control and regulation systems With improved control and regulation systems equipment devices can be operating and managed in a truly modular way, according to the type of construction and thermal inertia, energy use (lighting, heating) in the building, user behaviour, and the seasons. Optimising consumption and demand is the ultimate goal. At the same time users can be made more responsible with better information on the operation of energy-consuming devices via appropriate interfaces.

Electrical equipment The products, components and equipment that deliver and use electricity will have to be modified to reduce consumption and the need for peak electricity. Progress can be made in terms of electrical architecture, lighting, mechanical power, integration of electronics in devices, integration of information and communication technologies in buildings, in professional equipment (commercial refrigeration and cooking, computer equipment, photocopiers) and in household equipment (kitchen appliances, music and multimedia).

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Renewable energy The transition to positive-energy buildings means not only reducing heat and electricity needs to a minimum, but also implies being able to meet the remaining energy needs with renewable resources. In order to be able to systematically propose renewable energy installations for new construction and building rehabilitation, research will be required to develop the tools, procedures and systems to integrate these techniques in buildings.

R&D will have to address system design and sizing, energy storage and management of back-up sources, and the characteristics and performance of different configurations.

Overall approaches

Building design The architectural features of positive-energy buildings are key to reducing needs (for air conditioning, for instance) and for effective and harmonious integration of renewable energy to meet the remaining energy needs. The aim of this research is to reinvent bioclimatic architecture for a mass market, adapted to economical urban structures.

Bioclimatic architecture has always made the most of climate features — sun, wind, rains. The aim is to benefit from solar gains (called passive solar energy) while avoiding the discomfort of excessive exposure, and to use cool night air to cool buildings.

This type of architecture will now have to adapt to the constraints of sustainable cities, namely construction in densely populated areas (rebuilding a city on a city), choice of locations and urban forms that limit wasted space, sprawl and imposed travel distances. Beyond individual buildings, this new architecture should take the configuration of building clusters and the urban fabric into account, as well as landscaping and surroundings.

This will limit heat islands (zones of locally high temperatures in cities), or perhaps even take advantage of them, in keeping with both summer and winter comfort requirements, while reducing imposed travel and the resulting energy consumption.

Modelling Modelling tools can be used to simulate the performance of materials, equipment, construction systems, buildings and groups of buildings, in normal and in exceptional circumstances.

From a technical point of view they should test the energy and climate efficiency of the proposed architecture and structures. They can also be used to guide prospective thinking, and to assess the behaviour of buildings and clusters over time.

These models should test building and cluster resistance during extreme climate events and other exceptional circumstances, anticipate ageing, in terms of life cycle and service life of materials, equipment, systems, and foresee technical changes — introduction of new energy resources, equipment, uses, etc. These models will serve as the base for putting into place tools to monitor the performance of the buildings and clusters that are built.

From an economic point of view these models will help evaluate the profitability of value chains, the efficacy of social policies, etc. They can highlight priority actions and their economic conditions (cost-benefit analysis) because they take the diversity of the existing built environment into account and propose different forward-looking scenarios for the socioeconomic evolution of urban systems (structural cost increases for energy and raw materials, tight property markets and occupation of available space, penetration of renewable energy, dissemination of skills, stricter energy efficiency standards, etc.).

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Cross-sectoral issuesAdapting technical solutions to the diversity of existing building stock Existing building stock is strongly heterogeneous, in terms of period of construction, thermal characteristics, architectural diversity, and uses. There is every reason to think that different techniques and products will be required for the thermal rehabilitation of a “Hausmann” apartment building in Paris, a block of flats built in the 1960s, a detached house or a school building.

In order to find a balance between the diversity of the building stock and standard rehabilitation products a set of global thermal rehabilitation solutions must be developed that can be used for subsets of similar building types: a “Haussman” building package, a “school building” package, a “suburban flats” package.

The “Bâtiment Energie” foundation has initiated sampling techniques and measurement campaigns to determine these subsets of buildings with similar consumption profiles, thermal characteristics and occupant use. Standard solutions adapted to each of these subsets can then be elaborated.

Financial techniques Rehabilitation of existing buildings, new construction, upgrading thermal performance and eventually the transition to positive-energy buildings will all require additional investment, even if technical progress, training in the buildings sector and standardised approaches can help hold down these costs. Financial techniques that propose new financing methods can augment the capacity of households, private-sector actors and public authorities alike to finance the added cost.

A number of instruments already exist, such as tax credits and energy savings certificates. Others are being studied, such as no-interest greenhouse-effect loans, to finance the added cost of highly energy efficient construction, or the use of property values as a variable to amortise the cost of transforming a conventional building into a positive-energy building.

In light of the incentive and redistributive effects of these types of instruments, their impact and consequences must be evaluated beforehand and after implementation to apply the necessary corrective measures. The role of accompanying measures is to limit any eventual unwanted side-effects with respect to location, type and pace of construction, the socioeconomic status of new property owners, and prevent the creation of a two-tier property system.

Acceptance of new architectural forms Research demonstrators will have to show that high-performance buildings and building clusters are feasible. These buildings are above all meant to be inhabited, and their users and occupants must appropriate them. The issues of social acceptability must be addressed. This acceptability has many facets.

In psycho-social terms acceptability is determined by life styles, but also by changes in the reference values of society, which today ranks sustainable development highly: health and environmental qualities are now weighed along with economic values. This raises the issue of willingness to pay for a cleaner environment and healthier surroundings.

In economic terms, tomorrow’s buildings must integrate many changes in life style, working hours, mobility in career and work, as well as the value placed on leisure and the desire for mobility. All these trends bring changes to household finances and modify the relationship to the built environment in society, whether it be private homes or corporate buildings.

France has long pursued a policy of preserving its architectural heritage, urban cityscapes and the countryside, which has allowed very old buildings to be kept in activity and to be adapted to the requirements of modern operation. This policy is what makes our country attractive for tourists.

Regulatory tools are in place to reconcile designers’ creativity with the patrimonial heritage and ensure social acceptability. Rehabilitation of the built environment and design of high-energy-performance and positive-energy buildings presage the apparition of new architectural forms that break with the classical building tradition. In this context social sciences and legal work will have to provide markers so that society as a whole can appropriate this evolution and reap its benefits.

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Regulatory tools (building permits) Climate and energy issues make it necessary to develop new regulatory mechanisms for land use, implemented locally via urban planning documents: the Urban Code sets forth principles and rules, while the Building Code enforces minimum comfort and security levels.

The decisions of the Grenelle environmental conference allow for stricter energy and environmental performance regulations at two levels: nationally, via stricter thermal regulations, and locally through local urban planning (Plan local d’urbanisme–PLU) and territorial schemes (Schéma de cohérence territoriale–SCOT).

What are the likely consequences of these changes? Urban planning is expected to foster widespread dissemination of stricter quality labels in new construction, as well as for rehabilitation and renewal operations subject to authorisation via building permits. Regulatory and inspection tools in the buildings sectors will have to be adapted.

Meanwhile, proprietors and builders committed to positive-energy buildings and clusters must also make use of renewable energy resources. Local energy networks will come into being. These new networks must find a balance between energy production and demand. Regulatory tools will be needed to ensure that positive-energy buildings can be deployed without disturbing the balance between energy supply and demand. These networks will become structural elements for city development and will have a prominent place in planning documents.

In a broader view, the new energy economy will have repercussions for energy authorities: they will have to integrate and manage a large number of small, intermittent decentralised energy sources. This will require new tools for regulation, management and oversight.

Organisational tools (project management) In addition to design tools, financial instruments and regulations, building owners and construction companies will have to acquire new and diversified skills to meet mandatory energy-performance and low-carbon emission standards for new construction and building rehabilitation.

The diversification of actors goes hand in hand with building and urban construction techniques that are increasingly complex. To estimate overall carbon balances project managers must take upstream production and access to materials into account, as well as downstream effects in the course of the building life cycle, extending even to deconstruction or recycling. If performance objectives are to be met it will be increasingly necessary to put into place project management tools and decision aids, using modelling and simulation as the case may be.

Public-private partnerships have multiplied since the 1980s, and now must integrate new actors in building construction and use: energy specialists, thermal engineering experts, energy producers. Project organisation and coordination are all the more complex.

On another scale, the interaction between local urban policy and sectoral policies affecting energy and buildings must be analysed to understand the changes that must be made to regulations and governance.

26


> 7. The need for research demonstrators

The visions discussed above identify the technological, organisational and socioeconomic bottlenecks to be overcome in order to start the transition towards positive-energy and low-carbon buildings and building clusters.

They also outline the functions to be fulfilled by research demonstrators:

Function 1: contribute to the emergence of sets of technological, organisational and socioeconomic components to foster large-scale energy rehabilitation of existing buildings and building clusters.

These sets of components should enable:

•the emergence of ambitious commercial offers (including industrial) for the technological, organisational and socioeconomic options required for energy rehabilitation of existing building stock;

•reduction of implementation costs for energy rehabilitation by integrating properties to make these components «pluggable».

New business models can also be tested. These models can cover energy rehabilitation services of course, and design, manufacturing and implementation processes for energy rehabilitation components and component packages.

Function 2: test under real-life conditions the technological, organisational and socioeconomic (including legal and business models) measures that will enable the transition to positive-energy and low-carbon buildings in new and rehabilitated building stock.

This experimentation will explore, among others, the technological, organisational and socioeconomic options for energy exchange between buildings, pooling energy-producing and consuming equipment at the building or cluster level, including household appliances and multimedia devices13. These solutions will also be proposed for energy pooling and cooperation between buildings with different energy characteristics and different uses, with a view to optimising energy use across residential and commercial buildings.

13 - The relevant size of building clusters will have to be defined in relation to energy, environmental and economic criteria.

Function 3: integrate future changes in the energy framework into the design and energy rehabilitation of buildings and clusters.

The principal changes to be anticipated are interaction with smart electricity grids, and integration of decentralised or semi-decentralised production and storage capacity (including plug-in electric and hybrid vehicles).

A major focus is the conception of controllable and interruptible energy-producing and consuming equipment (that energy managers can disconnect during peak consumption periods), in order to:

•take advantage of all the energy, environmental and economic benefits bestowed by intelligent growth of energy distribution networks,

•gather information to monitor and adjust output to actual conditions of equipment use, in a timely fashion.

This will require research and demonstration work to augment the presence of intelligent devices inside buildings and to facilitate insertion of buildings in smart electricity grids.

Function 4: develop tools to follow the behaviour of building users and occupants. Using these tools data can be gathered to:

•analyse the real-life efficacy of projected technological, metrological, socioeconomic, legal and organisational measures, to avoid rebound effects, for instance;

•enhance the overall performance of these options, exploiting feedback from final users;

•study the conditions required for introduction of these measures in people’s daily lives and their adoption in the different final-user segments targeted;

• identify incentives (notably tariffs) and social regulation measures to foster grid management and disconnection/interruption of certain devices and equipment by the managers, and other steps to allow general application of all or some of the projected options;

•explain the difference between theoretical energy performance, optimum actual performance and actual conditions of use in buildings.

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Proposed research demonstrators must be integrated and multidisciplinary projects that cover at least two of the four functions described above.

They may be located anywhere in the country (mainland and overseas territories).

Projects can be proposed for new or existing buildings or groups of buildings (cluster, neighbourhood), for residential and/or commercial occupancy. Reflecting the dimensions of the issue, special attention will be given to research demonstrators that focus primarily or entirely on existing building stock.

In all cases, the projects should demonstrate the possibilities for transferring and reproducing the options deployed, in similar climatic and architectural contexts, and particularly in terms of creating industrial value chains and attaining the Factor 4 goals by 2050.

While focusing on energy use, the proposals for research demonstrators should also include systemic features, such as:

•consideration of general building quality issues such as fire hazard regulations, seismic standards, air quality, comfort and living standards;

•assessment of how location may affect occupants’ mobility needs and modes of transport, especially for projects pertaining to new construction.

The demonstrators must be actual construction projects, that realise the energy rehabilitation of a building or cluster, even if certain research questions may be addressed by modelling and simulation.

Demonstrators must be of sufficiently significant size to establish proof of feasibility for the proposed technological, organisational and economic options, and show how they are relevant in the context of a commitment to large-scale building rehabilitation and industrialisation of the value chain.

In addition to the above functions, special attention will be given to:

•the environmental (e.g. reduction of greenhouse gases) and economic balance sheets for the proposed demonstrators and later replications;

•compliance with policies to mitigate and adapt to climate change, at the building scale and beyond;

•capacity of the proposed options to show adaptability and resilience to future events (including climate change).

> 8. Bibliography

Scénario de réalisation du facteur 4 dans le secteur du bâtimentCLIPJanuary 2010

Vers des bâtiments à énergie positive : proposition de structuration des activités de recherche PREBATJune 2009

Feuille de route sur les systèmes et réseaux électriques intelligents intégrant les énergies renouvelablesADEMEJune 2008

Building Technologies Program: Planned Program Activities for 2008-2012U.S. Department of Energy2005

Comparaison internationale bâtiments et énergie réalisée dans le cadre du PREBATSynthèse des programmes de R&D – CSTBDecember 2007

About ADEME

The French Environment and Energy Management Agency (ADEME) is a public agency under the joint authority of the Ministry for Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and the Sea, and the Ministry of Higher Education and Research. The agency is active in the implementation of public policy in the areas of the environment, energy and sustainable development.

ADEME provides expertise and advisory services to businesses, local authorities and communities, government bodies and the public at large, to enable them to establish and consolidate their environmental action. As part of this work the agency helps finance projects, from research to implementation, in the areas of waste management, soil conservation, energy efficiency and renewable energy, air quality and noise abatement.

www.ademe.fr

French Environment &Energy Management Agency

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