Since recent years cooling demand in office buildings has tremendously increased due to higher internal heat production of equipment, lighting and higher thermal comfort requirements. Classical cooling machines needs a lot of electricity to cover these high demands when primary energy factors are taken into consideration. The use of vertical borehole heat exchangers (BHEs) in combination with a ground source heat pump (GSHP) reduces the energy consumption for the office building. The optimum number of vertical borehole heat exchangers is simulated.

For many reasons building simulation programs are still not recognized as useful design support tools to the same extent as Computer-Aided Design (CAD) or cost-estimating software. There is a strong perception that simulations are time consuming, costly, slow and require expensive or specialized equipment and knowledge that increase design costs. Additionally, simplifications applied to model description, algorithm inaccuracy, or deviations inherent to weather data treatment methods result in poor matches between measurements and predictions, which decrease confidence in obtained results.

Building AdVent is a new collaborative project funded by the EU through its Intelligent Energy – Europe (IEE) programme. The aim is to help spread good practice in ventilation design through a series of case studies and supportive teaching materials. This

In November 2006 a “CO2 emission and energy saving potential through correct pipe insulation of space heating and domestic hot water distribution systems in the new and existing buildings.” paper [3], sponsored by Armacell - worldwide producer of flexible

Library buildings offer special conditions to favor the adoption of low energy strategies. In addition, their potentialhigh degree of interaction with the youth and a specific educational role makes of libraries one of the best typologies of public buildings to spread good practiceson how to manage energy, indoor environment and sustainability. This study focuses on the energy efficiencyof libraries in the West and Tejo Valley Region, Portugal, in the context of the elaboration of its new regionalplan (PROT) [1].

The climate in southern Brazil is characterised by mild winters and hot-humid summers which requires the design to be adaptable to the often conflicting summer and winter requirements. In the residential sector, air conditioning consumption is still low, but it has been growing significantly along with an increase in peoples purchasing power, which emphasizes the importance of encouraging a change in construction practices (MME, 2001).

The Project of Ponte da Pedra came out of an Ideas Competition, which is, by the beginning, a good indicatorof the high quality of the housing architecture of Ponte da Pedra.

One of the current challenges in the urban climate researcharea mentions the standardization of procedures for data collection and analysis (OKE, 2005); this involvesnomenclatures and methods, so that the transmissionof the developed technology can be better understoodand applied in diverse realities.

Energy-efficiency benchmarking can be used to monitorchanges in overall efficiency of buildings. Benchmarkingmodels, based on energy-efficiency indicators are valuable tools for both public and private stakeholdersbecause they allow an improvement in the building energy management . For the last decade, some governmentshave used these tools to define their building regulations(M. Santamouris, 2005, W. Chung 2005). This paper tries to goes further, integrating a benchmarking and a modelling process, in the same energy efficiency analysis.

This research aims at developing new standardized typologiesof semitransparent double skin facades formed by an external semitransparent PV laminate, a wide air gap and a rear glass (Figure 1). There are actually many buildings in Europe which incorporate such activefacades, but all them have been designed as user defined projects and very few of them accurately evaluatethe feasibility of using the heat produced by the air channel.