National appliance of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive in Belgium and Spain : study of the U-value in the eeLAB

Abstract

Global environment awareness has led to the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 and the EPBD of Europe in 2002. In the first part of this thesis, the national transposition of this directive and the achievements studied. The first goal is to find out if there are improvements visible. A comparison between Belgium and Spain is made and shows that both countries will achieve their target. European and global emissions show decreasing trends so an improvement can be confirmed. In the second part, an analysis of the data obtained from the eeLAB has to make out if the U-value of a construction system is a reliable value to compare with the U-value of other systems, and if the radiation has any effect on the calculation. The U-value is obtained by dividing the flux of a wall by the temperature difference over the wall. This was done for two test cells on two days: a day with high and a day with low radiation. This calculation resulted in U-values that differ a lot from each other. There is no systematic variation or pattern in these results so the conclusion is that the U-value is not useful for comparison.