Energy Master Planning for Resilient University Campuses--Best Practices from Austria.

The energy supply in Austria was first established in the 1880s with regenerative microgrids for industries and public buildings. These were unified and modernized step by step to form what is now one of the most reliable power supply systems in the world. A large share of more than half of the power production comes from hydro power stations, many of which also provide pump storage. Since the 1950s, previously wasted heat from fired power stations has been distributed to dense urban areas via district heating. Oil price crises, rising awareness for environmental issues, and increasing availability of incinerable waste have led to a diversification of fuel and inclusion of geothermal heat and waste heat from industrial processes. Public buildings and communities were at the start of the Austrian modern energy supply system, and with growing demand for transformation of energy supply to meet net zero requirements, today they serve as models for the future. Thus, the efforts and methodology applied on Austrian university campuses are presented here as a result of the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) Project 864147, funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology, to contribute to the International Energy Agency Energy in Buildings and Communities Programme (IEA EBC) Annex 73, Towards Net Zero Energy Public Communities, which focuses on developing guidelines and tools that support the planning of net zero energy resilient public communities. Two case studies illustrate the transition towards net zero resilient energy: • Case Study 1: The Campus Technik of University of Innsbruck, where building envelopes and building technology have been modernized to reach an energy consumption close to what is achieved in high-quality new construction, with inclusion of heat regeneration from ventilation and use of ambient cold for night ventilation. • Case Study 2: The new campus of Wirtschaftsuniversität (WU) Wien, which uses groundwater heat in a cyclic way both for heating and cooling, where core activation allows for mostly direct use without the need for heat pumps to adapt temperature levels. This paper briefly describes the specific Austrian situation of legislation, tradition, and policy that creates the framework for changes towards net zero energy supply. The two case studies illustrate how this framework has been handled by the planning teams to meet the objectives in the most cost-effective way and how challenges have been dealt with and successfully overcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]