ABSTRACT
Affordable housing Schemes have became one of the solution to house people after the World wars and industrial revolution, and continues to be seen as such in many parts of the world with many developed cities such as Singapore, Malaysia, Dubai, America etc. The evils of Affordable Housing Developments are
many and well documented, however the affordable housing developments are still the best way to offer housing solutions in Urban centres. With the growth of urban centres, the energy required by the built environment continues to increase while the sources of energy continue to dwindle. Due to this, the building
industry has attempted to come up with new principles that can be used to ensure sustainability of the finite resources available leading to the development of new ideologies in design. To satisfy the requirements of need and sustainability, the concept of the Eco-homes is being developed in various parts of the world.
This study will focus on a relatively new idea for energy efficiency and independence; Net Zero Energy Building. This study outlines the various ways in which this energy demand from Affordable Housing communities can be reduced to sustainable levels and establish the various strategies applied during design to ensure energy efficiency in the operations and maintenance of such buildings. The study seeks to explore the concept of Zero energy building and the aspects that must come together for the actors in the built environment to achieve it.
The study addresses the issues that have hindered the acceptance of energy efficient buildings, from matters of cost to the issue of user comfort in highly efficient building systems drawing comparison with conventional building practices. It is the view of the author that the understanding of these ideas, principles and concepts will make achieving NZEB not only feasible, but the clear choice in building design and practice.
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
Global Warming is a hard truth; A looming Shadow hanging in the immediate periphery of life as we
know. The instinctual response we must all embrace to this pending adversity is to adopt a lifestyle that
accommodates the future, we are at a point where the decisions we make now determine the well-being of
our future Planet. Never have been the mistake been so high. At the same time, Urban populations are continuing to grow at a rate faster than the cities can manage, and it is obvious that our everyday modern way of life is quite unsustainable. As natural resources are used in an unrecoverable manner, causing air, land and water pollution which we all depend on for survival. If current development trend will continue, the “global temperature of the earth” will increase causing natural disaster and making the world uninhabitable. A strategic intervention is essential in not only the construction sector but also other sectors like agriculture, transport etc. This necessitates a systems based approach though local and national based policies for transformation of the existing energy demand, storage and supply delivery systems.
Ecological design movement was born to react as a response to these challenges: A collective movement
aimed at achieving sustainability in the building industry by environment base design.(It was the first approach to try to heal our environment). In recent years the movement has developed further into Net Zero Energy-A design for buildings whose energy needs are greatly reduced and the remaining portion of energy needs can be offset by using renewable technologies i.e. the total amount of energy used by the building on an annual basis is equal to the amount of renewable energy created on the site. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-energy_building].
