Norwegian Zero Emission Building Laboratory

The primary objective of the Norwegian Zero Emission Building Laboratory (ZEB Laboratory) is to facilitate the development, investigation, testing, and demonstration of new and innovative building technologies with high environmental sustainability targets. Serving as a platform for mitigating risks associated with implementing zero-emission building technologies, which are anticipated to become the standard within the next 5-20 years, the laboratory aims to achieve buildings that exhibit enhanced performance in terms of energy efficiency and resilience to climate challenges, ultimately achieving carbon emission neutrality, or even negative carbon emissions, over their lifespan. Comprising a large, full-scale office and education building, the laboratory features flexible solutions for facade components, technical infrastructure, monitoring, and control systems. These elements can be adapted, replaced, and integrated with new technologies to create either complete zero-emission buildings or sections thereof (e.g., individual office spaces). The involvement of occupants/users and user-interaction technologies is an integral part of the experimental setup, making the laboratory a dynamic environment for research and development with active user participation. The ZEB Laboratory facilitates the investigation of various experimental scenarios, with initial projects designed and executed by the FME ZEB Centre and SFI Klima 2050 in collaboration with industry partners. As a unique national research infrastructure, it is open to national and international stakeholders in the building industry for product development and research purposes. Additionally, the laboratory welcomes visiting researchers, including MSc and PhD candidates, from both domestic and foreign research institutions and universities. Furthermore, the facility serves as an office, teaching, and demonstration/dissemination space for researchers from NTNU and SINTEF on a daily basis.

The main objective of the Norwegian Zero Emission Building Laboratory (ZEB Lab) is to develop, investigate, test and demonstrate new and innovative building technologies, hence respecting and promoting future requirements and advances for sustainability and environmental progress. ZEB Lab will be an arena for risk reduction in implementation of zero emission building technologies, needed in buildings becoming the default standard in 5-20 years, i.e. buildings with improved performance levels both with regard to energy use and climate robustness. These will be buildings that are carbon neutral or negative during their life span and can withstand a harsher climate. The laboratory will consist of a large full-scale non-residential building (ZEB Flexible Lab) where most of the façade components and technical systems can be modified and replaced, and where technologies can be interconnected in such a way that they form a complete zero emission building or part of a building (e.g. one or more office spaces). The people/users interacting with the building and building technologies are part of the experimental setup - enabling a living laboratory. The flexible design of ZEB Lab allows investigations of several experimental test cases, where the first ones will be designed by and performed with the FME ZEB Centre including its industrial partners. ZEB Lab, which will be a unique national infrastructure, will be used by national and international building industry (in product development and research), visiting researchers (incl. MSc- and PhD-candidates) from national and foreign research institutes/universities, and researchers from NTNU and SINTEF.