Renovating Strategy for Educational Buildings towards Low/Zero Energy in EMU

Nowadays, most of the buildings are designed without considering the sustainability or responding to natural conditions which becomes a noticeable international trend. Recent global developments in awareness and concerns about environmental problems have led to reconsidering built environment approaches and construction techniques. One of the alternatives is the principle of low/zero-energy buildings. This study investigates the potentials of energy savings in an existing multi-story building in the Mediterranean region in order to achieve net-zero energy as a solution to increasing fossil fuel prices. The Colored building the Faculty of Architecture, Eastern Mediterranean University, North Cyprus was chosen as a target of this study to be investigated and analyzed in order to know the impacts of energy efficiency strategies applied to the building to reduce annual energy consumption. Since this research objective was to develop a strategy to achieve net-zero energy in existing buildings, case study and problem solving methodologies were applied in this research in order to evaluate the building design in a qualitative manner through observations, in addition to a quantitative method through an energy modeling simulation to achieve desirable results which address the problems. After optimizing the building energy performance, an alternative energy simulation was made of the building in order to make an energy comparison analysis, which leads to reliable conclusions. These methodologies and the strategies used in this research can be applied to similar buildings in order to achieve net-zero energy goals.