Cost Optimality Analysis of Nearly-zero Energy Buildings in different climates.

Abstract The effects of climate change on human life in the modern era are extremely significant. Every citizen in the European Union is contributing, in their own way, to the creation of a more environmentally friendly and sustainable community with fewer emissions of greenhouse gases every day. The manufacturing and construction industries are jointly responsible for 36% of Europe's and 38% of the world's CO2 emissions. In addition, the European Union (EU) is in the process of formulating its energy policies by placing an emphasis on the energy use of the building stock. They apply directives to each Member State that are referred to as Energy Performance of Building Directives (EPBD), so that each state can define its own legislation regarding the performance of buildings. The goal of Nearly Zero Energy Buildings (NZEB) is presented, as a cost-optimal methodology that proposes reducing the amount of primary energy consumed. This thesis examines single-family residential houses that is already in existence in the building stock of the Member States of the European Union. The research initiates in Turin, Italy. Which is located in an area that has a humid subtropical climate. With its pre-defined building components and system configurations, the very same house is re-implemented in a software program called "Edilclima." A monthly time step is used in the calculation of the house's consumption of non-renewable primary energy using the UNI/TS 11300 standard. In addition, the total cost of the home was determined by employing the EN15459 cost optimality calculation standard over a period of fifty years. This was done in order to arrive at the global cost. Following that, particular refurbishment scenarios were selected for the building envelope and system measures, and the process was then carried out once again. There were a total of six distinct building envelope configurations, each of which was combined with one of three distinct generation systems. Additionally, these situations were mixed with one another and four various PV systems to produce a total of 72 unique scenarios. After sorting the findings according to whether or not they meet the criteria for an NZEB, the cost-effective option for that particular environment is selected. The study is taken to an even deeper level by switching the climate zone to Denmark and Sweden, which results in the generation of two more sets of scenarios, bringing the total number of possible cost-optimal solutions to 216.