Strategies For Sustainable and Energy Efficient Buildings

建筑环境的温室气体排放（GHG）包括12%的建筑部门直接排放，另有5%归因于建筑物使用的电力。因此，重要的是减少建筑物中的这些排放，以便拥有更负担得起和更高效率的建筑物。改造是减少现有建筑物能源消耗和增加住房部门价值的主要战略。加拿大有大量的建筑物是在能源效率政策出现之前建造的，特别是在1970年代、60年代、50年代和更早的时候。这催生了建筑能源改造行业，这对加拿大住房部门来说是一个重要的经济机会。因此，需要研究支持，以提高建筑物的能源和水分性能。改造的主要挑战之一是评估建筑物外壳内可能导致与湿气有关的问题的冷凝潜力。尽管迄今为止取得了进展，但仍需作出大量努力，使建筑物节能，并确定最具成本效益的改造战略。由于缺乏对如何有效和安全地改造建筑物的误解，并支持加拿大正在进行的减少温室气体和能源使用的努力，因此建议研究开发具有成本效益的建筑物改造战略，以实现零能耗和耐用建筑，因此提出了这项研究计划。它将侧重于建筑物的能源和水分性能。这将通过实验室测试，建模和现场监测来评估其能量和水分性能。这项拟议的研究计划需要提供必要的科学数据和分析，以表征和改善现有建筑物的能源和水分性能。在研究计划中开发的用于同时评估能源，室内空气质量（IAQ）和湿度性能的耦合数值模型将以适当的实验数据集为基准，以捕捉整个建筑的最佳性能。该模型可以有效地改善建筑围护结构、室内空气品质、湿负荷等之间的动态相互作用。随后将进行参数研究，以开发一种用户友好的预测和优化设计工具，供建筑行业和研究人员使用，以评估减少建筑运营负荷的整体性能，从而减少随着时间的推移对能源的需求。拟议的研究计划旨在通过开发节能建筑来推进建筑设计，实现零能耗。其总体目标是有效减少能源使用和温室气体，从而减少现有建筑物的环境足迹。通过这一进程吸取的经验教训将对新的建设产生积极影响。

Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG) from built environments include 12% of direct emissions attributed to the building sector and another 5% attributed to the electricity used by buildings. Thus, it is important to reduce these emissions in buildings in order to have more affordable and higher efficiency buildings. Retrofit is a primary strategy for reducing energy consumption in existing buildings and add value to the housing sector. Canada has an enormous building stock that was constructed before the advent of energy efficiency policies, particularly in the 1970s, 60s, 50s and earlier. This has spawned the building energy-retrofitting industry, which represents a significant economic opportunity for the Canadian housing sector. Consequently, there is a need for research support to enhance the energy and moisture performance of buildings. One of the main challenges of retrofits is an assessment of the condensation potential inside the building envelopes that may result in moisture-related problems. Despite progress to date, much effort is still needed to make buildings energy-efficient and to identify the most cost-effective retrofitting strategy. With the lack of this misunderstanding on how to efficiently and safely retrofit buildings and to support ongoing efforts in Canada to reduce GHG and energy use, it is proposed to look at developing cost-effective strategies retrofit for buildings that lead to zero energy and durable buildings, hence this proposed research program. It will focus on the energy and moisture performance of buildings. This will be done through laboratory testing, modeling and field monitoring to asses their energy and moisture performance. This proposed research program is needed to provide the scientific data and analysis necessary to characterize and improve the energy and moisture performance of existing buildings. The coupled numerical model developed in the research program for simultaneously assessing energy, indoor air quality (IAQ) and moisture performance will be benchmarked with the appropriate set of experimental data to capture the best performance of the whole building. With this model, the dynamic interactions between building envelope, IAQ, moisture loads, etc. will be significantly improved. The parametric study will follow in order to develop a user-friendly predictive and optimized design tool to be used by construction industry and researchers to assess the overall performance toward reducing building operating loads and thus the demand for energy over time. The proposed research program is intended to advance building design through the development of energy-efficient buildings towards zero energy. Its overarching goal is to effectively reduce energy use and GHG, and thus the environmental footprint of existing buildings. Lessons learned through this process would have positive impacts on new construction.