Business from technology

Energy efficiency of buildings

Competence

VTT promotes the control of climate change, the use of renewable and bio energy resources and the influence on user behaviour. VTT develops energy-efficient building- and district-level solutions for new, refurbishment and retrofit construction. Indoor environment requirements and conditions are user-driven in these solutions. User orientation and new business opportunities are central to the development work. VTT's competence is based on strong technological basic knowledge, solution competence of energy-efficient buildings and technical systems, solution competence of eco-efficient community structures, versatile analysis competence of energy use and total building performance, and on strong international collaboration networks.

Challenges

The improvement of energy efficiency and implementation of renewable energy resources in buildings are linked with global societal and market-driven pressures. The challenge is to decrease the energy use of the building stock by 50% until the year 2050. Due to increasing environmental consciousness and demand for economical energy, the industry is motivated to develop their product and service portfolio towards total solutions which are advantageous both ecologically and in terms of their life cycle. A human being as user, sensor, client and actor has a key position in the development and in the effective implementation of development results. In order to reduce total environmental load, it is also important develop the energy efficiency of buildings as part of the whole energy infrastructure. In addition to decreasing energy demand, it is essential to reduce the demand for energy production or environmental load due to energy production, respectively.

Solutions

• Solutions for energy efficient buildings: low energy, passive, zero energy, energy neutral and energy positive buildings for new, refurbishment and retrofit construction
  
• Energy efficient community structure: compacting, unifying and logistic improvement of communities
  
• Eco-efficiency of built environment: management and control of material and energy flow on life cycle basis
  
• Energy infrastructure based on renewable energy resources: distributed energy production, energy storage on district and building level
  
• Local optimisation of energy solutions: integrated, energy-optimised system solutions
  
• Modelling of products and systems, performance verification and justification of life cycle advantages
  
• Potential assessments of energy technologies in building stocks, scenarios and impact analyses
  
• Productification of solutions, incentives for commercialisation
  
• Standards and regulations, calculation principles, classifications, certifications and audits.
  

Benefits

Energy use in buildings and the environmental load of buildings are decreasing

High quality and energy efficient total solutions

Optimal match between energy production and energy demand

Quality conscious end-users

New business opportunities

New products and global export activities

References and merits

• Co-ordination of several EU projects (I3CON, INTUBE, NORTHPASS, Success Families...) and participation in around ten other EU projects. In projects, there are altogether several tens of partners from the real estate and construction sector and product industry.
  
• Bilateral research collaboration with organisations from countries like China, the Republic of Korea, USA, Japan and Russia.
  
• Memberships of international organisations, networks and expert/advisory boards: European Cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research (COST), European Committee for Standardisation (CEN), International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB), International Energy Agency (IEA), International Organization for Standardisation (ISO), European Construction Technology Platform (ECTP), LowExNet.
  
• Management and leadership of several Finnish national energy related research and technology programmes over 20 year (LVIS2000, ETRR, RAKET, CUBE)
  
• 1 adjunct professorship, 4 doctors