Using proxies to calculate the carbon impact of investment into electricity network assets

Replacement and upgrading of assets in the electricity network requires financial investment for the distribution and transmission utilities. The replacement and upgrading of network assets also represents an emissions impact due to the carbon embodied in the materials used to manufacture network assets. This paper uses investment and asset data for the GB system for 2015-2023 to assess the suitability of using a proxy with peak demand data and network investment data to calculate the carbon impacts of network investments. The proxies are calculated on a regional basis and applied to calculate the embodied carbon associated with current network assets by DNO region. The proxies are also applied to peak demand data across the 2015-2023 period to estimate the expected levels of embodied carbon that will be associated with network investment during this period. The suitability of these proxies in different contexts are then discussed, along with initial scenario analysis to calculate the impact of avoiding or deferring network investments through distributed generation projects. The proxies were found to be effective in estimating the total embodied carbon of electricity system investment in order to compare investment strategies in different regions of the GB network

Parametric performance analysis and energy model calibration workflow integration - A scalable approach for buildings

High efficiency paradigms and rigorous normative standards for new and existing buildings are fundamental components of sustainability and energy transitions strategies today. However, optimistic assumptions and simplifications are often considered in the design phase and, even when detailed simulation tools are used, the validation of simulation results remains an issue. Further, empirical evidences indicate that the gap between predicted and measured performance can be quite large owing to different types of errors made in the building life cycle phases. Consequently, the discrepancy between a priori performance assessment and a posteriori measured performance can hinder the development and diffusion of energy efficiency practices, especially considering the investment risk. The approach proposed in the research is rooted on the integration of parametric simulation techniques, adopted in the design phase, and inverse modelling techniques applied in Measurement and Verification (M&V) practice, i.e., model calibration, in the operation phase. The research focuses on the analysis of these technical aspects for a Passive House case study, showing an efficient and transparent way to link design and operation performance analysis, reducing effort in modelling and monitoring. The approach can be used to detect and highlight the impact of critical assumptions in the design phase as well as to guarantee the robustness of energy performance management in the operational phase, providing parametric performance boundaries to ease monitoring process and identification of insights in a simple, robust and scalable way

SUSTAINABILITY INDICATORS FOR BUILDINGS: NETWORK ANALYSIS AND VISUALIZATION

Nowadays rating systems to assess the sustainability of the built environment are available worldwide. The idea that a rating system based on indicators and a sustainability score can guarantee architectural quality, reliability, energy efficiency, economic convenience and finally a sustainability label, produces an increased value of the building on the real estate market giving an "aura" of advanced product to the building itself. It is well known that different rating systems can give a different sustainability score because similar areas of evaluation in different rating systems are not equal in term of indicators' weight. Moreover, the continuous updating of the rating systems tries to include in the assessment procedures a tailored vision coming from field experience. The building rating systems were born in the last 15 years (i. e. 1998-2004), while rating systems for urban districts are more recent (2009-2012). The paper provides a survey on the more influential and worldwide diffused rating systems, highlighting the differences in terms of organization and relationship between evaluation areas and comparing existing rating schemes with recent EU research projects and initiatives such as the "Common European framework for Sustainable Building Assessment" (CESBA) framework. The paper aims to report the preliminary analysis on the similarities and differences among rating systems, towards a harmonization of sustainability practices to be applied to new and existing buildings. A network analysis and visualization tool has been applied to show the structural analogies among rating systems through an innovative methodological approach which aims to enable a further development in this field by linking more directly these tools with computational tools used in the building lifecycle

Off-grid PV systems modelling and optimisation for rural communities: leveraging understandability and interpretability of modelling tools

Rural off-grid solar photovoltaic systems require careful planning to address key uncertainties, including variations in user behaviour, possible climate change impacts, and differences between software simulation and optimisation methods. Recent literature underscores the importance of understandability, examining the workflow from scenario creation to system design, and interpretability, selecting data-driven techniques that are intelligible to humans and grounded in physics-informed assumptions. Recent advances in open-source platforms offer highly adaptable and transparent alternatives for rural electrification studies and represent an alternative to proprietary software tools. This study presents a novel framework that integrates a Particle Swarm Optimisation algorithm with open-source energy demand modelling tools to size off-grid PV plus battery systems in a traditional rural building. This integrated approach emphasizes understandability by explicitly describing objective functions, constraints, and computational techniques, organised as logical blocks. Within these blocks, the incorporation of physics-informed, data-driven approaches enhances interpretability. Validation through comparisons with well-established and validated open-source software confirms the credibility of the approach. Findings indicate that incorporating multi-timescale scenarios, reflecting climate change trajectories, evolving user needs and loads (e.g., electrified heating and cooling) can substantially improve confidence in off-grid solar system solutions. The results also underscore that transparent, open-source-based models can reduce costs, increase flexibility, and simplify adaptation to evolving rural energy needs. Overall, this work highlights the broader potential modelling workflow leveraging understandability and interpretability principles in diverse contexts, including rural buildings and communities. Future research may extend the modelling framework proposed by improving the formulation of the underlying surrogate modelling methods to improve scalability and computational performance for scenarios involving multiple buildings or communities

Open data and models for energy and environment

An increasing number of data sources and models to handle them call for transparency and openness in assessing their goodness and practical use for people. The simplest and most robust tools to collect, process, and analyse data to offer solid data-based evidence for future projections in building and district and regional system planning are of interest. For this purpose, and following the success of the first Special Issue “Open Data and Energy Analytics”, the Special Issue “Open Data and Models for Energy and Environment” has been launched, intended for energy engineers and planners. Among a very high number of submissions, 10 articles were selected for acceptance and published

Energy efficiency, demand side management and energy storage technologies - A critical analysis of possible paths of integration in the built environment

The transition towards energy systems characterized by high share of weather dependent renewable energy sources poses the problem of balancing the mismatch between inflexible production and inelastic demand with appropriate solutions, which should be feasible from the techno-economic as well as from the environmental point of view. Temporal and spatial decoupling of supply and demand is an important element to be considered for the evolution of built environment, especially when creating sectorial level planning strategies and policies. Energy efficiency measures, on-site generation technologies, demand side management and storage systems are reshaping energy infrastructures and energy market, together with innovative business models. Optimal design and operational choices in buildings are systemic, but buildings are also nodes in infrastructural systems and model-based approaches are generally used to guide decision-making processes, at multiple scale. Built environment could represent a suitable intermediate scale of analysis in Multi-Level Perspective planning, collocated among infrastructures and users. Therefore, the spatial and temporal scalability of modelling techniques is analysed, together with the possibility of accommodating multiple stakeholders’ perspectives in decision-making, thereby finding synergies across multiple sectors of energy demand. For this reason, the paper investigates first the cross-sectorial role of models in the energy sector, because the use of common principles and techniques could stimulate a rapid development of multi-disciplinary research, aimed at sustainable energy transitions. Further, relevant issues for the integration of energy storage in built environment are described, considering their relationship with energy efficiency measures, on-site generation and demand side management

Open data and energy analytics

This pioneering Special Issue aims at providing the state-of-the-art on open energy data analytics; its availability in the different contexts, i.e., country peculiarities; and at different scales, i.e., building, district, and regional for data-aware planning and policy-making. Ten high-quality papers were published after a demanding peer review process and are commented on in this Editorial

Building performance monitoring: From in-situ measurement to regression-based approaches

Simple and robust data analysis methodologies are crucial to learn insights from measured data and reduce the performance gap in building stock. For this reason, continuous performance monitoring should become a more diffuse practice in order to improve our design and operation strategies for the future. The research presented aims to highlight potential links between experimental approaches for test-facilities and methods and tools used for continuous performance monitoring, at the state of the art. In particular, we explore the relation between ISO 9869:2014 method for in-situ measurement of thermal transmittance (U) and regression-based monitoring approaches, such as co-heating test and energy signature, for heat load coefficient (HLC) and solar aperture (gA) estimation. In particular, we highlight the robustness and scalability of these monitoring techniques, considering relevant issues in current integrated engineer design perspective. These issues include, among others, the necessity of limiting the number of a sensors to be installed in buildings, the possibility of employing both experimental and real operation data and, finally, the possibility to automate and perform monitoring at multiple scales, from single components, to individual buildings, to building stock and cities

Net zero energy buildings: Expense or investment?

Abstract With the objective of reducing the heavy consumption of building sector, sustainable policies around the world promote, for the future, the construction of zero-energy or nearly zero-energy buildings. Higher investment in efficient technologies for energy saving and exploitation of renewables, however, can cause doubts about the real convenience of these "new generation" buildings. Based on the analysis of a case study under development, this paper demonstrates that a zero-energy building represents an affordable investment cost, especially if integrated with photovoltaics