Logo featuring a stylized green leaf with three white chevrons resembling a tree. The acronym ‘NZEB’ is prominently displayed in black, with ‘Nearly Zero Energy Building’ in green below. The logo emphasizes low-energy and sustainable building practices

Nearly Zero-Energy Building (NZEB) Strategy 2020 – Outlining a Path to Success

21 June 2019

In modern building design, the NZEB concept is one that aims to allow architects and consulting engineers to create buildings that cause little or no impact on the local and wider environment. However, the uptake of NZEB buildings across the EU has, to date, not been quite as expected and ZEBRA2020 is a project that aims to boost awareness and use of the technologies employed in the concept.

NZEB Definition

The definition of an NZEB (Nearly Zero-Energy Building) is one that works at a very high level of energy performance, with a significant amount of the total energy used provided from renewable sources. The ZEBRA2020  project investigated the uptake of NZEB across 17 EU countries and it found that from country to country, varying levels of awareness, bureaucracy and overall implementation is occurring – something that’s resulting in lower than expected levels of NZEB adoption.

The recommendations of ZEBRA2020 called for an acceleration in NZEB uptake with a greater emphasis on cross-border cooperation to allow for:

  • Sharing of best practices for renovations and new buildings
  • Efforts to establish strong exchange programmes
  • Support for an exchange of NZEB experience between nations

At Varming Consulting Engineers Ireland, we are fully aligned with the objectives of ZEBRA2020 and all efforts to make the construction industry greener and less impactful on the environment. Great strides have been made to make construction cleaner in recent years, but we still have some way to go on the journey and if the recommendations for international cooperation mentioned above are implemented, there’s no reason why the overall goals for NZEB adoption can’t be met.

If you would like to find out more about NZEB or any of the sustainable building design techniques we use in every one of our client projects, we recommend that you head to our website www.varming.ie, where you’ll lots of information, including details about our past work.

Alternatively, if you’d like a chat with one of our experts about how our building services design consultants could help you with your building project, call us now on +353 (0)1 4872300.