Articles

Sustainability can often be an afterthought and applied to the finished design without consideration of the impact the design will have in assembly and during life-cycle assessment. Most stakeholders vanish after handover, and this can translate into sustainability being forgotten or ignored. As well as these concerns, methods are also needed to prevent greenwashing and bring performance into the design frame.

As the European Union strives to improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions, heat pumps have emerged as key players in decarbonising our buildings. These technologies exploit renewable energy sources, offering a cleaner and more sustainable alternative to traditional heating systems. The article provides an overview on EU policies, financial instruments, and EU-funded projects to facilitate the adoption of heat pumps in buildings and to overcome the current barriers.

Digitalisation of buildings is a key component of the EU clean energy transition – smart technologies can enhance energy efficiency, allow buildings to be more responsive to the needs of occupants, and improve the flexibility of energy systems. To support this trend, the EU benefits from a rich and supportive framework – covering policies, programmes and financial instruments. How is the EU specifically shaping the future of buildings and the way we interact with them? How can we make our buildings more intelligent and responsive to the environment? This article provides an overview of the state-of-play and perspectives of digital, smart buildings and technologies in the EU context.

This article explores preliminary findings on what happens to homes when they become smarter, considering how going digital affects the ways in which homes are imagined, planned, designed, and experienced on an everyday basis, provoking decision-makers to think widely about the contexts and consequences of their actions when implementing smart technologies to improve building performance.

The EXCESS project develops positive energy building solutions and demonstrates them in four European cities to prove that cost-competitive, positive-energy building solutions can be realised across different European climatic zones.

This article presents the overall framework for the definition of Plus Energy Buildings (PEB) and the latest results from projects in terms of technology solutions, multiple benefits analysis, and policy recommendations.

Understanding and achieving the sustainable benefits deriving from digitalisation is a critical step in ensuring we deliver a skills-literate workforce capable of delivering green construction.

Ventilation plays a pivotal role in delivering comfortable and healthy indoor conditions to buildings’ occupants since both thermal comfort and indoor air quality (IAQ) are affected by ventilation. This article presents an overview of the metrics and the methods used to predict ventilation performance in buildings and of relevant EU policies and initiatives addressing the topic.