Jon Teres-Zubiaga

• PhD in thermal engineering
• Professor (Associate) at University of the Basque Country

Net zero-energy buildings have become one of the flagships in the path towards the decarbonisation of cities. Even though heating systems, especially in existing buildings, are currently the main consumer in many areas of the world, cooling needs are gaining relevance in several countries, and this is expected to be kept in the focus in the context...

Building energy renovations demand expertise from professionals to guide processes, including diagnostics, project planning, interventions, and maintenance. The emergence of open-access AI, like ChatGPT in November 2022, offers new possibilities for improving these processes by assisting or potentially replacing human experts. This study explores t...

Buildings energy renovation holds significant potential to reduce energy consumption in the building sector. In this sense, there is a growing momentum to extend the concept of nearly zero-energy buildings to entire districts, fostering Net-Zero Energy Districts. This shows the necessity for large-scale urban building energy modelling to identify t...

Building renovation processes always require guidance from different experts or professionals who successfully conduct all the steps starting from the previous studies, project definition, intervention, commissioning, and maintenance. The quality of the results often depended on the professionals’ expertise when facing these challenges. This work e...

Energy poverty has become a notable concern within the European Union (EU), with adverse implications for the well-being and social inclusion of susceptible populations, particularly women. Despite an increasing focus on gender perspectives in the context of the energy transition in recent years, the assessment of the geographical distribution of e...

Energy renovation in buildings is one of the major challenges for the decarbonisation of the building stock. To effectively prioritise decision making regarding the adoption of the most efficient solutions and strategies, it is imperative to develop agile methods to determine the energy performance of buildings on an urban scale, in order to evalua...

The energy renovation in buildings is one of the major challenges for the decarbonization of the building stock. In order to prioritize decision-making in the choice of the most efficient solutions, it is necessary to characterize the behaviour of the building stock and measure the impacts of possible improvements at urban scale. Reaching that poin...

Energy poverty is nowadays one of the biggest challenges to be tackled in the European Union, so identifying the number of households in a situation of energy vulnerability and taking the necessary measures to protect vulnerable and energy poor customers is considered to be essential. In this study, a simple methodology for identifying and monitori...

Selecting the thermal comfort model to determine the best hygrothermal conditions inside the house during the hot period has a great impact on the energy consumption of buildings in warm climates [1]. Therefore, this article presents the results of the evaluation of the thermal performance of a conventional home in dry warm climate, with case study...

This paper presents a parametric optimization of a building towards the fulfilment of the NZEB standard. The last update of the CTE (Spanish Building Technical Code), which determines the requirements for net-zero energy buildings, establishes some new limitations to be met that need to be studied and applied. In this paper, this whole process will...

The intervention on historic buildings through building energy retrofitting has become one of the current challenges of improving energy efficiency. Nonetheless, this building typology presents certain complexities. Among them, one of the most relevant is the protection on their façades due to the historical and/or artistic values of a given façade...

Renovation at district scale is a key strategy to reduce CO2 emissions by optimising the implementation of renewable energy sources and taking advantage of economy of scale. This paper focuses on analysing good practice examples on energy renovations at district scale. The paper adapts a qualitative research methodology in four phases, including th...

The nearly Zero Energy Building concept should be adopted in the renovation of existing buildings and actions upscaled and applied to larger and larger urban areas. In this context, this paper presents an optimization methodology for drafting integral renovation actions at district level. The methodology is based on a MILP model that allows selecti...

This article presents and validates a dynamic model of a natural gas-run micro-CHP boiler, whose primary mover is a Stirling engine. From a preliminary literature review on the modelling of this kind of devices, and taking into consideration the goal of performing full system simulations, a semi-empirical one is proposed. Specifically, the model co...

Building renovation plays a key role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and achieving the climate protection goals. The district scale approach is one of the most effective approaches to accelerate this process of reducing the energy consumption in the building sector as increasing its renovation rates. In this context, the Energy in Buildings an...

This report is the first of the deliverables from the IEA Annex 75 project. It documents the work of Subtask A – Technology Overview. As the title of the subtask indicates, the idea of this subtask was to create an overview of the available technologies for energy renovation and renewable energy supply at district level. The work has been carried o...

Micro-cogeneration has been recognized as an efficient technology that can contribute to European Union's energy and climate objectives with respect to delivering low-carbon heat and power to citizens and small businesses. For improving the performance of this technology and so take as much advantage as possible of its potential, thermal energy sto...

This paper explores the effects of multi-zone heating systems in residential buildings in different Mediterranean climates. The aim is to evaluate their potential in residential sectors to provide a general basis from the results (from the energy and economic point of view). In addition, if feasible, a further detailed evaluation of this management...

El sector de la edificación juega un papel clave en la mitigación del cambio climático. A pesar de la heterogeneidad existente, la longevidad es una característica común del parque edificatorio europeo. En España, aproximadamente el 56% del parque edificatorio fue construido antes de la primera normativa térmica (NBE-CT 79). Así, la rehabilitación...

Renewable Energy Sources (RES) offer a key transformative potential from a social point of view due to their modularity and capacity to generate energy at local level, allowing for the development of democratic and participative bottom-up initiatives. Spanish RES cooperatives, unlike other European countries, are few in number. Here, we review thei...

Oral communication presented in the 9th edition of the European Congress on Energy Efficiency and Sustainability in Architecture and Urbanism (EESAP 9), hosted in Bilbao in September, 2018 (In Spanish)

One of the main causes of failure of Thermal Engineering students is related to problem-solving. Most lecturers consider this is due to the lack of understanding of the Principles of Thermodynamics, to their practical from theory to practice and also to certain extent, to the deficiencies in the mathematical competencies of the students. In general...

In this paper, a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming model is proposed for the design of the energy renovation of existing buildings, considering both Energy Supply Systems and the adoption of Energy Saving Measures to reduce the demand of buildings in retrofitting towards the nearly Zero Energy Building standard. The method is applied to an existing...

And overall view of the European Project A2PBEER is placed in this work on it the innovative actions token into account within the energetic retrofitting of an administrative building are placed also the used monitoring system for both the previos and the post assessment of the building is deeply reviewed.

Individual metering and charging of heat and domestic hot water is one of the possibilities for reducing the energy consumption in existing multifamily buildings and, with this aim in mind, the EU-directive 2012/27/EU enforced the installation of individual heat consumption meters. Even though some experimental evaluation of energy savings that may...

Within the overall objective of reducing carbon emissions, existing building renovations must consider energy conservation and efficiency measures, but also take into account measures that promote the use of energy from renewable sources.Considering these key points, an energy renovation of a non-energy-efficient and nonsustainable office building...

“Birgaitze energetikoak gizarte etxebizitzan: portaera termikoaren analisia” doktorego tesia eraikinen birgaikuntza energetikoaren ebaluazioan datza, prozedura honek barne hartzen dituen atal ezberdinak kontuan hartuz: datu eskuratzea eta monitorizazioa, datuen tratamendua eta lortutako emaitzen analisiak esaterako. Helburu honekin, atal esperiment...

The feasibility of individual natural gas fired boiler-based heating systems in the retrofitting of buildings constructed in the 50–60 s in Bilbao (northern Spain) is evaluated in this paper. A holistic approach through dynamic simulations using TRNSYS is employed for the purpose. An existing dwelling previously monitored and used to validate the m...

The transition to renewable energies is at the heart of the Sustainable Degrowth (SD) proposals due to its potential to relocalize and democratize the energy generation in a sustainable way. In this paper, we review the development and current situation of the Renewable Energy Sources Cooperatives (REScoops) in Spain, assessing their strengths, bar...

Grey box models are a solution for evaluating and quantifying the effect on building thermal performance of different energy saving measures. They are usually used to predict a building thermal performance, and applied to energy systems. This paper presents the application of a grey box model to evaluate the thermal performance of a reference socia...

Los edificios consumen alrededor del 40% de la energía total consumida en Europa. La rehabilitación eficiente energéticamente desempeña un papel esencial en el cumplimiento de los objetivos 20-20-20 de la UE. Se puede lograr un mayor impacto a través de intervenciones en edificios no residenciales, dado que su consumo de energía es un 40% superior...

In order to reduce the required volume for thermal energy storage, a finned plate latent heat thermal energy storage system for domestic applications is presented in this paper. This innovative design allows the exchanging of energy between water and the RT60, used as the phase change material. The simulation of that system is covered by a validate...

In this paper the energy and exergy performance of a social dwelling of a multi-family building from the 1960s in Bilbao (Spain) is presented and various improved energy concepts based on exergy principles are proposed and investigated. The aim of this paper is to explore and demonstrate the usefulness of the exergy approach in the assessment and d...