German Embassy Phnom Penh goes green
German Residence and Chancellery converted into Energy-Efficient Buildings
In Germany, the greatest potential to save energy is offered by existing buildings: These use around three times more energy for heating than new buildings. In addition, around 87% of the total energy consumed in a private household is required for space heating and hot water. Up to 80% of this can be saved with a professional refurbishment and modern building services. The fact is, however, that only around a third of the energy savings potential is exploited on average in a refurbishment project.
In Cambodia the situation is not much different except that electricity is much scarcer and therefore more costly. What heating is in Germany air conditioning is in Cambodia.
Starting with the Ambassador's residence the buildings of the German Embassy are at present refurbished with up to date measures to improve energy efficiency:
a ventilated roof protects the building from heating up from exposure to sun
a 22 cm layer of glass wool padding on the ceiling of the top floor further improves the insulation quality of the building
the outer shell of the building is insulated by a 6 cm styrofoam construction and plaster which adds to the insulating effect
hot water will be generated by a solar generator
the whole air conditioning system will be refurbished with a new energy efficient air conditioning system which represents latest technology
for the lighting of all buildings energy saving light bulbs have been used already for long.
Once construction work at the Ambassador's residence has been completed the chancellery building will follow suit.
In its efforts to contribute to the fight against global warming and in order to reduce CO ² emissions the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany within its policy has adopted a series of measures to improve energy efficiency in housing and industry. The Federal Foreign Office takes its share by improving worldwide its Embassy buildings and residences.
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Reducing CO² emissions Focus of Government Policy
To support the government and the private sector in these efforts the GERMAN ENERGY AGENCY (DENA) has been created. DENA administers within its activities the pilot project “Efficient Homes” where it proves in more than 300 buildings that energy-efficient methods of construction can reduce the energy requirements of a building by up to 85% on average.
Thermography picture of a townhouse
(red colour indicates loss of energy)
The goals of this project are, by means of best-practice projects:
* to speed up the transfer of expertise,
* to spread knowledge of innovative technologies for energy refurbishment, to develop these further an to introduce them into the market and
* by way of transferable, economically-viable refurbishment recommendations, to encourage to follow suit.
Up to now, more than 140 buildings have been refurbished as "low energy buildings". On average, they cut energy use by around 50 percent of the level required by the EnEV for comparable new buildings. In total, the project encompasses more than 4,600 residential units over an area of more than 246,841 m². Approximately 27 percent of the buildings belong to the housing industry, 30 percent are owned by private tenants, and 43 percent belong to single-family or two-family house owners. Currently, more than 200 further buildings are refurbished for high energy efficiency.
In order to reinforce the domino effect of energy-efficient building refurbishment, dena has set up a successful network of existing regional centres of expertise.
Due to its resounding success, the dena model project with the standard that requires the energy consumption of the refurbished building to be 50 percent less than that of a comparable new building is being continued in 2007 as an official component of the CO2 Building Rehabilitation Programme of the promotional bank (KfW Förderbank). Also in 2007, a similar model project is being started for non-residential buildings: "Efficient Schools".
For more information refer to DENA: http://www.dena.de/en/
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