An approach to the evaluation of energy- emergy performance of vertical opaque building envelope

Today, environmental and energy related issues are considered current and important problems that threaten human health and the world. To minimize or eliminate the negative environmental impacts it is required to consider the total energy consumption and the energy sources.Construction industry has an important role in energy consumption and environmental pollution. Buildings are responsible approximately for 50% of CO2 emissions. In the examination of the negative effects of buildings on environment it is obvious to see that there is a constant resource consumption during the design, construction and use stages of them.To put forward a sustainable environment and a sustainable building, it is necessary to understand the problems and to produce comprehensive approaches in terms of solving those of problems throughout the life cycle; construction, operation, maintenance, repair and demolition processes of the buildings. In this respect, the performance of the building envelope in terms of energy conservation and environmental evaluation criteria must be considered together.In this study, performance evaluation of the vertical building envelope comprises two stages including the production and use of building envelope.In this thesis;In the first chapter information on literature utilized in the thesis is given, the aim of the thesis and hypothesis are discussed.In the second chapter definitions and concepts related to sustainability are explained. Relationships between building envelope and insulation performance described from the point of sustainability.In the third chapter the methods used in the determination of the environmental performance of the building envelope are given within of the manufacturing and use of the building. The analysis of environmental impacts of the building envelope contains information related to the environmentals impacts of the production phase, energy requirement of operation phase, and emergy cost. Total energy required for the production, transportation and application of the materials used in the building envelope are also covered as well as the value of specific emergy, which defines those of work in terms of quantity of solar energy, in contruction and use stages of the building.In the fourth chapter an approach to the environmetal performance of the building envelope and the steps of that approach are determined. These of steps are:o Energy analysis (EA) and emergy evaluation (EE) for production-construction phase of a building: this stage includes the non-renewable energy consumption caused by production, transport, construction and maintenance pocesses of the building envelope materials and environmental accounting method called emergy evaluation which is used in the calculation of the cost of the total life cycle defined as the quantity of solar energy, directly or indirectly.o Energy analysis (EA) and emergy evaluation (EE) for the building use phase; this stage includes the determination of energy requirements due to heat losses and the heat gains through the building envelope, and the emergy consumption accounts equivalent of solar energy in use of natural gas and electricity throughout the year.The fifth chapter covers the application of the proposed approach for Ankara and İzmir cities.In this context, additional energy and emergy investements and savings of the building envelope, which are determined by the energy analysis and emergy evaluation during the production and use phases of the building, are calculated considering a simple envelope. The results of each stage are evaluated, and the percentage of activity is determined.In the final chapter of the thesis, the building envelopes of which energy-emergy calculations are done, are compared for both Ankara and İzmir climatic zones, and the results of the proposed approach are indicated. The case study shows that the building envelope performances are different depending on the climatic conditions of the region and production technologies. It is also indicated that different building envelopes are required to comply with those of climatic regions.