New construction and renovation – Lead the way
The investment decisions made now will have a significant impact on the carbon footprint of both the real estate and construction sectors as well as the energy sector.
The carbon footprint is a comprehensive measure of sustainable construction in that it can be influenced in several ways. For example, the efficiency of a façade structure no longer arises only from the U-value describing heat loss, but the carbon footprint takes into account what building materials the structure is made of; how the service life of the structure has been maximized; how the repair and possible re-use of the structure has been made as easy as possible or whether solar panels may have been integrated into the structure, in which case the structure actually produces a positive carbon handprint during its life cycle. The assessment of the carbon footprint of buildings is becoming part of our building regulations.
With Zero, you can make sustainable choices and lead the way in low-carbon construction.
Sustainable construction is not a cost issue when design solutions are optimized. In many of our projects, significant emission reductions have been achieved with the same or even lower than expected investment costs. At the same time, improvements have also been made to the quality of the indoor climate.
CASE-example: Extension and renovation of a school center
Zero helped to optimize a solution where, without additional investments, life cycle cost savings of more than 1.3 M€ (30%) can be achieved in a 30-year review period as well as a 64% reduction in operational CO2-emissions.
The chosen design can also improve the indoor environment quality to the S2-level of the indoor air classification.
We defined the technical alternative solutions suitable for the site and the direct and indirect costs for the selected alternatives (including investment and life-cycle costs and space requirements). We looked at a total of more than 4,500 different alternative solutions.