The project will analyse low energy buildings, emphasising planning, design, market conditions and user experience. The concept of low energy buildings covers buildings utilising electronic solutions to allow for a detailed management of various energy-de manding functions like heating, light and ventilation. In addition, the technical design of the building itself is very important through the choice of building materials, insulation and area use. In this way, one provides a basis for how much or little e nergy that will be consumed in the building.
The main research questions are:
<h>- What strategles are used to establish low energy buildings, and how may such strategies succeed?
<h>- What kind of actors are involved?
<h>- Which kind of knowledge do they possess?
<h>- What are their contributions to the construction process?
<h>- Which technologies are perceived to be functioning?
<h>- How are the economic aspects evaluated, and
<h>- How do the actors perceive the future users of the buildings?
In theory, low energy buildings hold a great potential to reduce stationary energy consumption related to buildings. Technologically speaking, the concept has been sufficiently developed to be implemented, even if there probably are great possibilities for further improvement. To realise these possibilities, however, low energy buildings need to be constructed in order to gain experience and learn from this. Consequently, it is very important to public authorities as well as the building industry to id entify policy instruments and tools that may promote increased activity in the making and use of low energy buildings.
