To reduce the concentration of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and formaldehyde emitted frombuilding materials and furnishings, it has been suggested that new buildings undergo a bake-out.According to the existing studies [3, 4], ventilation during a bake-out is believed to be essential forreducing the concentration of indoor air pollutants. For a practical use of bake-out, several ventilationstrategies such as natural and mechanical ventilation can be considered.

European Directive for Energy Performance of Buildings (EPBD) was approved in the beginning of2003. The transition period is 3-6 years depending of the article. European StandardisationOrganisation (CEN) has drafted several standards to help the member countries implementing thedirective. One of these is the Criteria for the indoor environment including thermal, indoor air quality(ventilation) light and noise. The standard specifies design values of indoor environment, values to beused in energy calculations, and methods how to verify the specified indoor environment in thebuildings.

From the beginning of 2006 all new European buildings (residential, commercial, industrial etc.) musthave an energy declaration based on the calculated energy performance of the building, includingheating, ventilating, cooling and lighting systems. This energy declaration must refer to the primaryenergy or CO2 emissions. The European Organization for Standardization (CEN) has prepared aseries of standards for energy performance calculations for buildings and systems.This paper presents related standards for heating systems.

Indoor thermal environment is much affected by characteristics of an equipped heating system. Suchthermal environmental factors as temperature, air velocity, radiant temperature and their distributionscan influence the thermal sensation and the energy consumption of a heating system.

In this paper, a new optimal design method for buildings and urban energy systems is proposed. Alsoits applicability is analyzed through a simple case study. Genetic Algorithms (GA) which can deal withnonlinear optimization problems is adopted for this optimal design method. This method has twooptimization steps, selection of equipment capacity and selection of the best operational planning.These optimization problems cannot be solved separately due to the strong relation between thecapacity size and operation efficiency of equipment.

The heat island phenomenon in the Tokyo metropolitan area has spread ever more widely, and it is nowtoo wide to treat as a single regional phenomenon. In this paper, the authors have analyzed the climateon an urban scale in summer, and compared the regional characteristics of the atmospheric heatbalance at the center of Tokyo, an inland satellite city, and a satellite city on the other side of Tokyo Bay,using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation.

In Heerlen, the Netherlands, warm and cold water volumes from abandoned mines is used for heatingand cooling of buildings, based on a low exergy energy infrastructure. The combination of lowtemperature heating and cooling emission systems, advanced ventilation technologies and integrateddesign of buildings and building services provide an excellent thermal comfort and improved indoor airquality during 365 days/year, combined with a CO2 reduction of 50% in comparison with a traditionalsolution.

In December 2004 the EU RESHYVENT project is completed, a three-year project within the EU FifthFramework Programme, on the investigation and development of Demand Controlled HybridVentilation systems in Residential Buildings. The project is a clustering of four industrial consortia fromSweden, the Netherlands, Belgium/France and Norway with a multi-disciplinary scientific consortium.Each of these industrial consortia has developed a working prototype of a hybrid ventilation system fora specific climate.

The purpose of this investigation is to know the present status of indoor air chemical pollution byVOCs in Japanese houses. The concentrations of formaldehyde, toluene, xylene, ethyl-benzene,styrene and acetaldehyde were measured in ten thousand built houses from 2000 to 2005. And thefollowing results were obtained. In 2000, the indoor concentrations of formaldehyde exceeded theguideline established by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Japanese Government at thepercentage of 27%. And In the case of toluene the percentage was 12 %.

Blinds are used widely in numerous buildings to conserve energy and provide for occupants’ comfort in the perimeter zone. But manual or motorized blinds are limited in their ability to reduce energy consumption because occupants must control blinds themse