New white paper "Climate-friendly construction

Climate change is also leading to increasingly hot summer temperatures in Switzerland. This is particularly noticeable in cities with dense development and many sealed surfaces. Buildings and their surroundings must therefore be planned in such a way that they also offer a high quality of stay in the climate of the future. The new white paper "Building climate-friendly" serves as a knowledge base and inspiration for building in the context of climate change and can be here can be downloaded free of charge.

Cities in focus
Green spaces with shady trees and cold air corridors, which are supposed to bring cooling, are not available in many places, or only to an insufficient extent. As a result, heat islands form in urban areas, where the thermometer shows up to 10 °C more at night than in surrounding areas. To counteract this heat island effect, a catalog of measures needs to be drawn up for the respective location. Important principles for planning and building in line with the urban climate are, for example, the positioning and dimensioning of buildings, but also green areas, facades and roofs, and shading.

Ventilation and cooling
In prolonged heat, even a well-planned building heats up. It is extremely effective to dissipate the accumulated heat at night. This can be achieved, for example, by cross-ventilation. It is even better to design buildings in such a way that a chimney effect develops. Via ventilation sashes in the façade - next to the windows, for example - cool outside air enters the interior and is discharged via the stairwell and an opening in the roof. Such solutions result in no or minimal additional costs and function more efficiently than air conditioning units.

Diverse local energy sources
The basic cooling requirements of office or residential buildings are ideally met by environmentally friendly passive cooling. In Switzerland, various local energy sources come into question.

Whether with geothermal probes, seawater or other variants: The decisive factor is that cooling consumes as little energy as possible during operation and can be cleverly combined with a solution for climate-friendly heating. Building owners, investors and architectural experts should therefore discuss the topic in good time with an energy service provider such as ewz and check which options are possible. It should not be forgotten that in residential buildings, the required cooling energy remains rather low compared to the heating demand. Therefore, decarbonization of the heat supply must remain a priority goal in order to achieve net zero.

The white paper "Building climate-friendly" provides you with further information, detailed insights and various best-practice examples that show concrete solutions for implementing the topic. The new whitepapers is available for free download for all interested parties.

ewz with sites in Zurich | Sils (GR) | Prilly (VD)
www.ewz.ch/energielösungen