Sustainable living: CO₂-neutral housing

VELUX

Buildings represent about 40% of all energy consumption in Europe. It is the energy we use to get hot water, light and to heat or cool buildings. In the European Union (EU), we spend 90% of our time indoors. But up to 30% of our building mass neither contributes to nor provides a healthy indoor climate. Future buildings must be CO₂-neutral and provide a healthy indoor climate.

Home for Life is CO2-neutral and produces more energy than it consumes

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s CO₂ footprint must be reduced by 80% if we are to limit global temperature increases to 2 degrees by 2050.To reach this global objective of CO₂ reduction, a new agenda for house building must be introduced.

To reduce CO₂ emissions from buildings, we must look at the overall energy efficiency, healthy indoor climate and use of renewable energy. Together, these key areas are the core of what VELUX refers to as Sustainable Living – the ability to continue improving the quality of our homes and maintaining high living standards while reducing or eliminating CO₂ emissions.

Home for Life is CO2-neutral and produces more energy than it consumes

Energy efficiency

Windows are energy contributors. Firstly, good daylight levels save electricity and secondly, solar gain through correctly placed windows heats up the house during winter. Intelligent windows with exterior roller shutters are smart and know when to insulate from cold, when to protect from heat and when to provide ventilation. In Southern Europe, a home-owner can save up to 33% of energy by using active roof windows, where the roof window functions automatically in cohesion with roller shutters.

Healthy indoor climate

It is a documented fact that children’s learning abilities rise by up to 15% if they are in a good indoor climate (reported by the International Centre for Indoor Environment and Energy based at the Technical University of Denmark). Maximum daylight and ventilation are preconditions to ensuring optimal indoor comfort and minimal energy consumption consistent with the standards of the future. More daylight in rooms means energy cuts can be made for lighting. In one sitting room alone, 100 kWh/year can be saved. Better use of daylight could produce an estimated 2-300 kWh/year for the whole house. In Europe, better use of daylight alone in its 150 million households could mean a saving of 15 million tons of CO₂ every year.

Renewable energy

If solar thermal panels were installed in every home in Europe, the saving could amount to some 20,000,000 tons of oil - equivalent to taking 20 million cars off the road every single year. By including renewable energy as an integral part of the building, we can make the house an energy contributor instead of an energy consumer. Hot water can be produced by solar energy collected through solar panels – and new technologies are emerging that will allow solar energy to cool buildings. Solar collectors can provide up to 70% of the energy needed to heat domestic water supply.

Active House – a new vision

The health and well-being of the people who live and work in buildings are the pivotal concerns of a new vision for the building sector called Active House. The concept is founded on experience gained from state-of-the-art low-energy buildings and concentrates on objectives for buildings of the future. The definition of Active House is now being forged by several players in the building sector, including VELUX.

VELUX recently demonstrated the potential of working with the Active House concept when, together with a consortium of partners, it completed the first of six CO₂-neutral buildings. This is a new family house in Aarhus, Denmark – Home for Life, which is CO₂-neutral and produces more energy than it consumes, thanks to solar thermal heating, heat pumps and low-energy windows. The remaining buildings, under construction in five European countries, will be completed in the course of 2010.

VELUX
W: www.velux.com