Context and Overview

To achieve the established long-term climate neutrality targets, the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive was revised to set a more ambitious goal that from 2027 all new public buildings, from 2030 all new buildings and from 2050 all buildings should be zero-emission buildings (ZEB). This goal of ZEB calls for buildings to have very high performance, with a very low amount of energy required being covered by energy from renewable sources and no on-site carbon emissions from fossil fuels. Given the need to improve the energy performance of the building stock, building energy simulation becomes an essential tool to help achieve these goals. Therefore, it is fundamental to train and empower professionals with skills in building energy simulation programs to be able to face the challenges currently posed.
The aim of this MC is to introduce the students to the building energy simulation tools, showing their capabilities for the design of new and renovated buildings. This MC will provide the procedures to define the geometry of a building model, the parameterisation of the thermal properties of the envelope and building utilisation. The development of the exercises will permit students to understand the capabilities required to obtain detailed and integrated results about the different heat exchanges and thermal loads of a building system. The development of a case study will be used to practice and compare the influence of different solutions on the thermal performance of buildings. At the end, students will be prepared to use building simulation tools to contribute to the design of highly efficient buildings.