Energy offenders in low-energy building

The workshop also concludes that the high energy consumption in modern office buildings can be attributed to errors and deficiencies in

all the phases of the building construction process (and not just only one or a few of the phases).

The workshop concludes that these errors and deficiencies may be attributed to the fact that there is too much focus on reducing the construction cost and less focus on the operating cost, including energy costs. The strong focus on the construction cost puts pressure on everybody in all phases – and this will often conflict with energy efficiency.

There is a lack of drivers towards energy efficient behavior. And there is a lack of knowledge, tools and methods to ensure energy efficient buildings.

A very fundamental problem is that it is not possible to analyze whether a high energy con-sumption is caused by another use or operation of the building than assumed in the Be10 cal-culation or that the high energy consumption is in fact caused by poor building design, poor performance by the installations or poor construction.

For that reason it is of paramount importance that tools and methods are being developed to compare the Be10 calculation and the actual energy consumption and document the exact causes of the discrepancies.