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The paper deals with the integrated building design process in the French tropical island of La Reunion throughout the design of the first Net Zero Energy Building named ENERPOS. So far the design process in France is not well adapted to the design of zero energy buildings and does not allow the easy achievement of energy efficient buildings. A reorganization from the brief to the construction of the building itself is therefore necessary. Several reasons can explain this statement. First, no thermal standards are mandatory in Reunion Island as most of the French overseas territories. This leads to the construction of energy consuming buildings. However, a guideline named PERENE has been set-up but the prescriptions are not mandatory. They concern the thermal conception of buildings as well as the energy performance of buildings and are specific to each climatic zone that has been defined in PERENE. Despite that, the PERENE rules give only a minimum level of performance and can not be considered as the optimum design. Second, the lack of knowledge in the HVAC design practices about the last design tools and the lack of discussion between the people involved in the design process - i.e. the architect and the engineers is an obvious weakness for optimizing the passive design of the envelope and the systems. In some cases, the design teams selected by public owners - the Regional Council, the University and the City Councils have most of the time an overall good level of knowledge but unfortunately the brief of the building is not accurate enough in terms of objectives and energy performance requirements to meet. The paper will present the state of the art in France in terms of design process from the brief until the completion of the building. Then the adopted methodology will be introduced and applied to the case study of the ENERPOS building. The design stage has focused on the development of new methods for the design of zero net energy buildings in French tropical overseas territories. As the building has been completed in 2008, the lessons learned will be presented as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), academia, and private sector subject matter experts, recently completed an energy study to evaluate potential site and source energy-use reduction in new Army buildings. The study was completed in response to the mandates for energy savings in federal buildings enacted by the U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (U.S. Congress 2007). The building types studied included an Unaccompanied Enlisted Personnel Housing (UEPH or barracks), a brigade headquarters (administrative building), a company operation facility, a maintenance facility, and a dining facility (DFAC). The study was conducted for representative locations in all 15 DOE identified climate zones in the United States with building designs adapted to these climatic conditions. This paper presents the results of the energy analysis for a typical Army dining facility. It discusses energy efficiency measures and combinations used to reduce both internal and external loads on the building and overall energy use. The largest load in a DFAC is the cooking, and the currently available best-in-class kitchen equipment is included in the final design. The potential site energy savings compared to the energy code range from 21% to 38%. The potential source energy savings compared to Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey ranges from 37% to 42%. Additional savings may be obtained if an efficient cogeneration system is used and the building is considered as a part of the building cluster or community to fully utilize the energy from the cogeneration system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Northern climate like the one in Montreal 4,557 DD (SI) - (8,200 DD (IMP)) presents huge challenges to the designers to reach Net-Zero Energy buildings. A large amount of the energy required is related to the heating of the outside air and the 24 hours/day, 7 days/week operation. It is not rare to be faced with labs designed a few decades ago which consumes in the order of 2150 kW-h equiv /m²-year (200 kW-h equiv/sq.ft.-year), compared to 540 kW-h equiv / m²-year (50 kW-h equiv / sq.ft.-year) and better for recent labs. This paper presents a list of potential options to improve energy efficiency. Three laboratories are presented with the different measures that were applied in those buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]