5 - Innovative systems
The EPBD as support for market uptake for innovative systems
To the question 'which standards or regulations could be barriers for new hybrid ventilation systems?', the industries of the European RESHYVENT project (2002-2004) immediately replied: 'the coming EPBD related regulations, if they do not consider innovative systems !'.
What is an innovative system, in the context of EPB regulations?
First of all, it is important to have in mind what "innovative systems" means in the specific context of Energy Performance of Buildings (EPB) regulations.
In the context of EPB regulations, innovative systems/technologies are defined as:
- systems/technologies which mostly give a better performance in terms of the energy performance of buildings than the common technologies and,
- whose performance cannot be assessed by the standard EPB calculation methods.
According to the definition mentioned here above, it can be said that, a glazing unit with a very low thermal transmittance (e.g. U-value = 0.3 W/m²K) is not an innovative technology in the context of EPB regulations if the procedure in the EPB regulation is based on EN 673, because this standard allows the calculation of such U- value.
Some examples are: active facades, humidity or CO2 controlled ventilation systems, lighting systems with presence control and/or daylight steering, electrochromatic glazing, ground-coupled air ducts, etc. It must be noticed that, according to the above definition, a system or product could be considered as innovative in one Member States, but not in another. (e.g. humidity controlled ventilation system is not explicitly covered by the regulation in many EU countries and thus are innovative in those countries, but are not in the French, where there are very specific procedures for humidity controlled ventilation systems).
The main objectives of ASIEPI were to create/increase awareness of the Member States regarding the potential problems to assess innovative systems (in legal and technical terms) and to give them suggestions about attractive approaches, primarily based on experiences in other MS.
It is clear that both EPBD related regulations on the one hand and innovative systems or technologies on the other hand may strongly improve the energy performance of buildings. Experience in e.g. France, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden has shown that a proper handling of innovations in the national EPB regulation often leads to a market transformation (e.g. humidity controlled ventilation is widely spread in France, with more than 1.5 Million dwellings equipped, whereas the in other EU countries, the market is marginal).
Therefore, ASIEPI aimed to analyse the impact of EPB regulations on the innovative technologies, to emphasise the consequences of this issue, to raise awareness of policy makers and industries, and to give guidance to the Member States on how the situation could be improved.
This first step was to make a "State-Of-The-Art analysis" of the current situation in the different Member States participating in the project. The following points have been analysed:
- What is the legal framework in each MS (if any)?
- What kind of systems are considered as innovative (according the above definition) in each MS?
- Who is allowed to make the performance assessment? Are there assessment and specific quality control schemes? Is there a role for organisations involved in technical approval systems? What problems concerning performance assessment are found in practice? Can solutions be found in other countries? To what extent can results obtained in one country be relevant for other countries?
- Financial aspects, e.g. who is paying the study?
- How does it work in practice (good and bad experiences from industry)? How many studies have been carried out so far? What are the conditions for a successful implementation? Why do some barriers occur in one country and not in another, what lessons can MS learn from each other?
- What is the impact of the procedure on the market for innovative systems?
This "State-of-the-art" analysis is available here.
In a second step, pro’s and con’s for the various approaches, have been identified, and guidelines have been made available allowing Member States to accelerate the realisation of a qualitative environment for the assessment of innovative systems in EPBD context. (These guidelines covers legal and technical issues. However, as SAVE is not a framework for technical projects, ASIEPI did not intend to develop new methodologies to assess the performance of innovative systems.)
The pro’s and con’s for the various approaches and the guidelines will be available soon.
Last update: 11-02-2010.