The Logistics of Energy: Strategies for achieving Energy Optimisation within nZEB Mixed Use Urban Developments

The recast European Directive for Energy Efficiency in Buildings requires that from December 31st 2020 all new buildings constructed within the European Union (EU) meet an nearly-Zero Energy Building (nZEB) standard. The defining characteristics of which place an emphasis on (a) Cost optimality, (b) Improved building controls, (c) Improved fabric performance, and (d) Substantive renewable energy provision, all based on a predictive energy performance. However the specific nZEB definition has been left ‘open-ended’, so as to allow variation across individual EU nation states. This paper suggests strategies to facilitate energy optimisation of the nZEB standard within mixed use urban developments located in a temperate oceanic climate. The paper derives from a concern that the nZEB standard, as practiced in Ireland, may inadvertently increase lock-in of current energy standards and use valuable resources now in an unplanned, profligate way. In so doing we reduce our future communal capacity to greater self-determination in regards to all forms of future energy, renewable and non-renewable, operational and embodied. These are pressing issues due to the necessary long service life of buildings and the thirty years to 2050 within which it is considered imperative that we bring greenhouse gas emissions to Zero.