Green Building with Residential Buildings

Objective for future residential buildings is a constant improvement in the heating heat requirement with an accompanying reduction in the CO₂ output in the building operation. According to the energy concept of the German Federal Government, 20% of the primary energy are supposed to be saved until 2020 and 50% until 2050, compared with the year 2008. The transformation of energy from sun, water and wind power is the greatest hope for carbon-free energy supply systems. By 2020, the portion of renewable energies in the gross end energy consumption is supposed to be 18%. The unstable availability and the still unresolved storage effectiveness still leave a lot of leeway for widely diversified research activities. Still, an energy consumption as economical as possible is therefore the primary approach to reduce energy consumption and thus CO₂ emissions into the atmosphere.

• What must future buildings look like? Is there an ideal building form?
• Are the investigations of heating requirement and primary energy requirement sufficient indicators for an ecological total evaluation in the building stock?
• Which parameters for residential buildings to be constructed newly could additionally be considered in a comparative evaluation?
• Decision support for planners and building contractors

Solar-active building shells can clearly reduce the primary energy requirement and the CO₂ emission of residential buildings. Heat pumps with combined reservoir variants (latent reservoirs, ice reservoirs, earth reservoirs …) can make another contribution to that due to efficiency increases. Large south-oriented window surfaces are one of the most important heat sources for instance in passive houses. Multiple glazings with low heat passage coefficients (U values) and maximum energy passage degrees (g value) have a positive influence on the annual heat energy balance. In comparison with opaque components, the transparent components are still weak points, however.

• How can solar energy reserves be stored efficiently?
• How can transparent components be further optimized by adaptation?
• How strongly can unheated glass porches influence the annual heating requirement?

Another starting point for the reduction of the primary energy requirement is the use of ecological materials. Also, the gray energy, that is the required entire energy for the building construction, is to be considered in an integrated consideration from the cradle to the grave. Also green roofs and facades can make a contribution to Green Building due to CO₂ storage and improved component properties from the point of view of construction physics. Bionic aspects can be helpful sources of ideas, also low tech instead of high tech can be justified with energy saving. Synergetic building constructions can either represent usage or functional symbioses (chimney oven as living room stairs, bio mass reservoir as thermal insulation). An integrated consideration of the symbiosis of house and land can also create material cycles and synergies.

A Green Building is not shaped by its external appearance. Rather it is the “inherent values” of buildings such as e.g. energy consumption, resource consumption, recycling ability, etc. that are called “green” and are thus associated as compatible to environment. Synergetic building constructions can shape a Green Building and optimize component functions by means of multi-functional properties. The decision support is supposed to provide the building contractors with transparency with regard to economic efficiency and ecology for heat insulation and heat provision in the new building and the renovation.