OPET Building

Buildings fulfil multiple purposes. They provide shelter and aim to create adequate working and living conditions for their inhabitants. Apart from these functional aspects, buildings serve as a means of cultural identification and social representation. To satisfy all these diverse expectations, financial, material and energy resources are required to construct and maintain a building.

Despite the diversity of individual life styles in the EU member states and in accession countries, about 41% of the total final energy use in these countries is used to heat, cool and light buildings.

Corresponding to the decisive share in final energy consumption the building sector is also a main source for greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, the cost related to energy use in building must not be neglected: In 1996, the accompanying costs in the domestic and tertiary sector corresponded to roughly 4% of the GDP of the EU.

This background given, the OPET BUILDING Network pursues the following overall goals:

1. Promoting of efficient and innovative building-related energy technologies in the major segment of the building sector, which is the residential building sector as well as the service building sector (tertiary buildings), both for new construction and building refurbishment;
2. Supporting of market penetration of innovative instruments and tools, which can be applied by building owners, facility managers and/or engineers and planners, and which foster the application of efficient building-related energy technologies;
3. Ensuring a smooth and quick application of the European regulation concerning the energy performance of buildings;
4. Paying special attention to innovative technologies and design concepts that have passed the primary stage of demonstration, pilot and laboratory plants and that are just on the edge to commercialisation with a promising market perspective.
5. Increasing the level of information and know-how transfer throughout Europe by linking leading expert organisations in a network and by implementing joint activities;
6. Contributing to the creation of a European research area by strengthening the co-operation between with research centres, universities and industries, that deal with the development of building-related technologies.

The overall goals of the project are reflected by the composition of 7 work packages. Summing them up, the most important objectives of the project are as follows:

1. Translation of the measures and instruments used in the European regulation on energy performance of buildings into demand for innovative energy technologies by increasing the level of information and know-how at the relevant players, that influence the effective national and regional implementation of the European regulation (WORKPACKAGE 1).
2. Increase of the application of instruments such as Energy Performance Contracting ( WORKPACKAGE 2) and Life Cycle Cost Analysis (WORKPACKAGE 3) in the building and facility management practice by reducing the entrance barriers to these instruments through targeted information and the development and dissemination directly applicable tools;
3. Improving the “standard approach” for the refurbishment of residential buildings towards a more comprehensive approach (WORKPACKAGE 4);
4. Putting a particular focus on the market penetration of technological concepts that are seen as key technologies for sustainable buildings:
   • micro/mini-CHP for heat and electricity supply of buildings, that promise a major contribution to meeting the indicative Community target of doubling the total share for CHP electricity production to 18% by 2010 (WORKPACKAGE 5);
   • Solar heating networks and combined solar and biomass heating systems, that already now allow the heating requirements of residential buildings to be met at acceptable costs (WORKPACKAGE 6);
5. Setting-up an information channel for communication and information exchange inside the consortium as well as for a comprehensive dissemination towards target groups by putting in service a web-site and a set of training courses (WORKPACKAGE 7).

AEE INTEC is work package leader for work package 6, “Solar and biomass heating systems for energy efficient buildings”.

(Source of pictures: OPET BUILDING Workprogramme)