Net zero energy buildings and climate resilience narratives – Navigating the interplay in the building asset maintenance and management

Abstract

This study examines the critical role of existing built assets maintenance and on-site energy assets (e.g. solar PV and battery storage) across the asset hierarchy and typology to enable net zero energy building and climate-resilient building concepts in various climate scenarios. This study employs building energy simulation, optimisation models, and remote sensing as methodological tools for a building archetype in Penrith, Sydney, Australia. For the building archetype, the existing assets' maintenance-related models showed an energy intensity reduction potential of up to 7 % and a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning-related electricity intensity reduction of up to 12 %. These figures are significant considering the knock-on effect on the size optimisation of the new on-site energy assets that require asset investment planning. For every 1 % climate-related increase in electric load across climate scenarios, the solar PV size increases by about 2.5 % and the battery storage size by around 0.2 % in kW and around 0.7 % in kWh. This indicates that the built asset maintenance, management, and investment planning strategies cannot be done in isolation as it would risk having a building energy system that would underperform during extreme climate scenarios or when the urban heat-related cooling energy demand is high.