Browsing by Author "Lopez-Ochoa, Luis M."

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    Adaptation of rural residential buildings in a Mediterranean climate to climate change: A case study of La Rioja (Spain)
    (2024) Lopez-Ochoa, Luis M.; Las-Heras-Casas, Jesus; Carpio, Manuel; Sagredo-Blanco, Enrique
    Climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing the building sector and rural areas in particular should be prioritised due to their special characteristics. In this work, ways to adapt rural residential buildings in a Mediterranean climate to climate change via energy renovation were studied, taking La Rioja (Spain) as a case study. Different energy renovation solutions were evaluated under different climate change scenarios considering the possible evolution of the climate zones. The energy and economic impacts of these energy-renovated buildings were compared to those of existing buildings. Nearly zero-energy buildings were achieved by changing the thermal envelopes and their corresponding interior partitions. The study discovered that, on the one hand, the heating energy demand was reduced while the cooling energy demand was increased, thus reducing the total energy demand; on the other hand, the best energy renovation solution entails compliance by nearly zero-energy buildings with current building thermal regulation for the current climate zone. This work can serve as a guide to establish and promote energy renovation policies that are effective in addressing climate change and are economically viable. Furthermore, the methodology developed and the results obtained can be extrapolated to other cold Mediterranean climate zones.
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    Towards nearly zero-energy residential buildings in Mediterranean countries: The implementation of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive 2018 in Spain
    (2023) Lopez-Ochoa, Luis M.; Las-Heras-Casas, Jesus; Gonzalez-Caballin, Juan M.; Carpio, Manuel
    The new Basic Document on Energy Saving of the Technical Building Code (CTE-DB-HE) provides the necessary requirements to achieve nearly zero-energy buildings (NZEBs) and promotes the use of renewable energies in the Spanish building sector. In addition, the new CTE-DB-HE, transposition of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive 2018, introduces specific requirements for the implementation of electric vehicle charging in-frastructures in building car parks. The objective of this study is to analyse the energy and environmental impacts of the application of the new CTE-DB-HE in the residential sector. Different multi-family buildings in the most representative cities that meet the requirements for new and renovated buildings and use different heating and domestic hot water systems, as well as photovoltaic solar systems, are studied. The results are compared with those obtained by applying the previous regulations. Compared to the previous NZEBs, the new NZEBs achieve reductions by at least 46% in non-renewable primary energy consumption and 13% in total primary energy consumption. In addition, the changes introduced are shown to have helped prompt significant progress in the achievement of a highly energy-efficient and decarbonized building stock, achieving a reduction by at least 19% by 2050 in the main energy and environmental indicators.