the environment - sustainability- energy strategy

The energy strategy for the Santa Roza project has been developed to minimize energy consumption by making efficient use of local climatic conditions and available energy sources.

A low carbon approach has been taken with a focus on passive design.

The following strategy has been employed in order of priority:

  1. Reduce the energy demands.
  2. Meet the remaining energy demands with high efficiency systems.
  3. Use a mix of energy supplies and renewable energy systems.
  4. Enable users to operate buildings efficiently through provision of energy monitoring facilities and good information.

The benefits of a passive design not only result in the biggest energy saving measures but also reduce project costs.

The energy strategy key points can be summarized as:

  1. Minimize solar gains - the climatic conditions in Nicosia almost always result in solar gains contributing to the cooling load rather than reducing the heating load through passive heating.
  2. Facade design - Optimizing the thermal resistance of the facade as well as the location, size in thermal resistance of window is critical to balance heat gains and heat losses through conduction.
  3. Minimizing the cooling load and increasing cooling efficiency.
  4. Minimize auxiliary (fans, pumps and controls) energy.
  5. The use of a solar thermal hot water system supplemented with electricity-powered heat pumps rather than oil fired generation for heating and hot water generation.
  6. The use of a Building Management System to control and monitor the efficiency of plant.
  7. Consider the use of adiabatic cooling - daytime atmospheric conditions are typically dry. Evaporating water into the air will increase the humidity to more comfortable (occupants) and functional (IT equipment) levels as well as cooling the air temperature down without additional energy input.

Sustainability Benchmark and BREEAM

In general, sustainability benchmarks are used to encourage substainable building.

The benchmarks tend to focus on same key areas such as saving energy and water, promoting the use of sustainable materials and creating quality indoor environment.

Benchmarking schemes need to push the legislative boundaries, keeping ahead of the mass market in order to drive innovation and with the aim to raise the standard of all buildings.

In order for any scheme to retain value, it should be hard to achieve, At the very least there should b exemplar levels to aspire to attain.

It is understood that the client's aspiration is to achieve a BREEAM "Excellent" rating. In order to achieve an "Excellent" rating, it will be necessary to excel in all areas. Given the specific constraints within Cyprus, this will prove difficult in certain categories.