Strategies For Sustainable and Energy Efficient Buildings

建筑环境的温室气体排放（GHG）占建筑部门直接排放的12%，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，以便拥有更实惠和更高效的建筑物。改造是减少现有建筑能源消耗和增加住房部门价值的主要策略。加拿大有大量的建筑是在能源效率政策出台之前建造的，特别是在20世纪70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，这对加拿大住房行业来说是一个重要的经济机会。因此，有必要研究支持，以提高建筑的能源和湿度性能。改造的主要挑战之一是评估建筑围护结构内部的冷凝潜力，这可能导致与水分有关的问题。尽管迄今为止取得了进展，但仍需作出很大努力使建筑物节能，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战略，改造建筑，从而实现零能耗和耐用建筑，因此提出了这项研究计划。它将重点关注建筑的能源和防潮性能。这将通过实验室测试、建模和现场监测来评估它们的能量和湿度性能。这项研究计划的目的是为现有建筑的节能和防潮性能提供必要的科学数据和分析。研究项目中开发的耦合数值模型可同时评估能源、室内空气质量（IAQ）和湿度性能，并将以适当的实验数据集作为基准，以获取整个建筑的最佳性能。该模型将显著改善建筑围护结构、室内空气质量、水分负荷等之间的动态相互作用。随后将进行参数化研究，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，以评估降低建筑运行负荷的整体性能，从而减少对能源的需求。拟议的研究计划旨在通过开发节能建筑来推进建筑设计，朝着零能耗的方向发展。其首要目标是有效地减少能源使用和温室气体，从而减少现有建筑的环境足迹。从这一过程中吸取的经验教训将对新建筑产生积极影响。

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.