Research Group 56 - Energy efficiency and renewable energy

Efficiency or renewables? The answer is: both! —– Without renewables, there can be no CO2-free energy supply. But only the consistent implementation of energy efficiency creates the conditions for the sustainable use of renewable energy. The Working Group on Cost-Effective Passive Houses 56 shows how energy efficiency and renewables complement each other perfectly. The biggest challenge is to cope with the winter peak in energy demand, caused primarily by space heating, which consumes energy when the supply of renewables is low. In particular, the seasonal storage and associated conversion processes required for this are associated with high losses and high costs. —– With the PER method, also explained in this protocol volume, the Passive House Institute has developed a sustainable evaluation system that maps resource requirements in a renewable future. This shows that it only becomes technically and economically interesting to cover a large proportion of the remaining energy demand with locally generated renewable energy when the building's energy demand is very low.