An early-stage energetic and environmental analysis for the new district of Jakobsgårdarna in Borlänge, Sweden

To achieve the aim of low carbon cities and zero energy districts, it is important to adapt the efficient technologies while maintaining the thermal comfort and sustainable environment. The new challenge in design and building new districts lies in a sustainable and smart way to minimize energy consumption and thus carbon emission. This challenge can be overcome by the use of early-stage energetic and environmental analysis of the planned districts, which can result in sustainable and efficient use of the resources. This thesis aims to assess the energy demand and the carbon emission for the proposed design of Jakobsgårdarna district in Borlänge, Sweden. The complete analysis of the neighbourhood is assessed through a tool - Urban Modeling Interface, a Rhinoceros-based plugin developed by the Sustainable Design Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. A base case scenario is evaluated for energetic performance, lighting, heating, cooling, hot water, daylight potential, walkability, and life cycle assessment. Then, a sensitivity analysis is addressed, in particular to evaluate the impact of daylight potential, archetypes, window to wall ratio, wall materials, future climate, and a possible lockdown, on energy consumption and carbon emission. In the base case, the analysis shows that preschool has the lowest specific energy consumption of 64.1 kWh/m2, while retail shops have the highest (92.2 kWh/m2) energy consumption. The simulated energy consumption of the offices and residential buildings is 72.1 kWh/m2, and 80.4 kWh/m2 respectively. The life cycle assessment reveals the advantage of the environment from building wooden houses instead of using concrete or masonry. The total embodied carbon for the whole district is 149.3 kgCO2/m2 divided as follow: 160.9 kgCO2/m2 for the school; 164.9 kgCO2/m2 for the offices, 159.6 kgCO2/m2 for the retail shops, 55.0 kgCO2/m2 for the wood residential buildings, 164.9 kgCO2/m2 for the masonry residential buildings. The sensitivity analysis explains exhaustively the influence, which has changes in the base case scenario. In particular, the future climate will decrease heating consumption due to the increase of the mean annual temperature and, on the other hand, increase cooling demand. While a possible lockdown to the district will rise consumption in residential buildings due to a higher use of equipment and lighting, but it will lower the energy use of offices and schools. The overall research results are expected to be useful to propose suggestions and recommendations for the next steps of design about Jakobsgårdarna district in Borlänge