On Monday, January 22nd, 2024, REHVA, in the framework of REHVA-ASHRAE cooperation, has given a Seminar during the 2024 ASHRAE Winter Conference in Chicago on “Zero Emission Buildings: Rolling Out the Revised Energy Performance Buildings Directive in Europe”. REHVA delegation was formed by the President, Catalin Lungu, Vice president and Treasurer, Livio Mazzarella, the TRC Chair, Jarek Kurnitski, and the REHVA Journal Editor in Chief, Jaap Hogeling.
The seminar, chaired by Jaap Hogeling, aimed to inform the HVAC world out of Europe about the European Union policy on buildings decarbonization through the revision of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. In fact, the revised EPBD will determine the national regulating authorities to set-up requirements in the building regulations to achieve next to very low primary energy use a decarbonized building stock by 2050. These policy measures will be rolled out step by step, where the embodied carbon will gradually be taken in account as well.
This session addressed issues like primary energy calculation, zero emission building requirements, life cycle global warming potential as well potential technical solutions like the use of heat pumps. The seminar was based on three presentations:
- Building Live Cycle Global Warming Potential: New Indicator Required By the Revised EPBD, by Livio Mazzarella
- Primary Energy Calculation and New Zero Emission Building Requirements in the EPBD, by Jarek Kurnitski
- Heat Pumps: A High Potential Solution to Decrease Operational CO₂ Emissions in Buildings, by Catalin Lungu
On Tuesday, January 23rd, 2024, ASHRAE President, Ginger Scoggins, the president-elected, Dennis Knight, the treasurer, Bill McQuade and the executive vice-president Jeff H. Littleton, have received the REHVA delegation, to define a common strategy for improving cooperation between ASHARE and REHVA, which in the past has suffered of a lack of communication. To overcome this issue and relaunch the cooperation, it was agreed to institute a liaison committee, which will quarterly meet to improve communications and sharing of activities.
On Tuesday, January 23rd, 2024, AiCARR organised a meeting with REHVA and ASHRAE representatives to present CLIMA 2025 to ASHRAE, with the aim to engage them in participating to this event as much as possible. To increase the expectation, diseminate the information and then the ASHRAE members participation to CLIMA 2025, it was decided to institute an ad hoc CLIMA2025 committee, compound of AiCARR, ASHRAE and REHVA representatives.
See Livio Mazzarella's presentation
See Jarek Kurnitski's presentation
See Catalin Lungu's presentation
During the conference, Wim Maassen, author of the upcoming REHVA Guidebook gave an insightful presentation on his work.
He gave updates on the upcoming publication of the Guidebook, which is in collaboration with ASHRAE.