The Netherlands is undergoing a massive (re)construction challenge. In addition to building new housing, a substantial part of the existing building stock of housing corporations is undergoing renovation. This renovation challenge has varying interactions with the energy transition, testified by the …

The Dutch national CO2 emission targets for heritage buildings are a 60% reduction by 2040. However, holistic insights on the impact of this reduction on heritage values, energy performance, and CO2 emissions are understudied. In this article, the impact in four heritage buildings by comparing the situation …

Energy poverty and liveability of neighbourhoods are major socio-economic challenges. They pose a complex task for policy officers working in urban neigbourhoods. There is a need for better understanding of the profession of policy makers and their relation to homeowners. In a development and innovation …

Background Positive Energy Districts, which incorporate energy planning at the district level, are a pioneering concept for sustainable, smart and climate-neutral urban development. This concept supports creating communities that generate more annual energy than they consume. To this end, integrative …

Construction and demolition waste (CDW) is the most important waste stream in the EU in terms of mass, with around 340 million tonnes between 2010 and 2018 (EEA, 2020). Most member states achieved a recovery target of 70% for this fraction, however, it is mainly based on backfilling or downcycling. Materials …

Many neighborhoods dating from the 1970s, with corporation-owned terraced housing in open urban schemes, saw a round of renovation for the houses in the last decades, but left the supply of family homes intact. This housing stock doesn’t meet the needs of the elderly still living in them anymore, nor …

This research presents a case study exploring the potential for demand side flexibility at a cluster of university buildings. The study investigates the potential of a collection of various electrical devices, excluding heating and cooling systems. With increasing penetration of renewable electricity …

One of the most complex and urgent challenges in the energy transition is the large-scale refurbishment of the existing housing stock in the built environment. In order to comply with the goals of the Paris convention, the aim is to live “energy-neutral,” that is, a dwelling should produce as much sustainable …

Growing volumes of wood are being used in construction, interior architecture, and product design, resulting in increasing amounts of wood waste. Using this waste is challenging, because it is too labor-intensive to process large volumes of uneven wood pieces that vary in geometry, quality, and origin. …

Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) are potential high-impact climate change mitigation actions towards low carbon or even climate neutral cities. This implies that the energy performance and greenhouse gas emissions of PEDs need to be assessed. To this end, an accounting methodology, metrics, supporting …