Toward an Expanded Nzeb Policy Platform

The urgency of Climate Change places a significant burden on the European Community to successfully implement it’s ‘nearly’ Zero Energy Buildings (nZEB) policy across the Construction Industry. The policy derives from three broadly stated aims: (i) energy security, (ii) retention of competitiveness, and (iii) support for sustainability. This paper suggests that only by expanding the current nZEB Policy Platform will meaningful strategic success be achieved. Furthermore the metric of such success needs to change from ‘Business as Usual’ to a direct focus on reducing ‘Greenhouse Gas Emissions’, (GHG). This necessitates a challenge to the current orthodoxy of belief that ‘sustainable development’ is an ‘achievable contradiction’ and that growth is an economic prerequisite that can continue without fundamental change. Future nZEB buildings must be energy positive, significantly reducing their energy need across many years of operation and reducing pressure on our national power grids. The author proposes that rather than ‘sustainable development’ being the pursuit of the EU, we must support concepts of ‘minimal entropy’, ‘closed loop resource allocation’ and clearly defined criteria for measuring same. nZEB policy must be reviewed within five years of its initial implementation and the considerations herein are therefore urgent and timely.