In district energy systems planning, the calculation of energy needs is a crucial step in making the investment profitable. Although several computational approaches exist for estimating the thermal energy need of individual buildings, this is challenging at the district level due to the amount of data needed, the diversity of building types, and the uncertainty of connections. The aim of this paper is to present a simplified measurement-based methodology for estimating the cooling energy needs at the district level, which can be employed in the preliminary sizing and design of a district cooling network. The methodology proposed is suitable for tertiary buildings and is based on building electricity bills as historical data to calculate the yearly cooling demand. Then, the developed method is applied to a real case study: the feasibility analysis of a sustainable district cooling network for a hotel district in the city of Marrakech. The designed system foresees a 23-MW_cold district cooling network that is 4 km long, supplying 26 GWh of cooling to the tourist area. The results show that the proposed methodology for cooling demand estimation is coherent with the other existing methods in the literature.

New community-scale developments should address both greenhouse gas emissions mitigation and climate adaptation goals. This paper presents a systematic approach to energy master planning (EMP) of net-zero emissions communities via probabilistic analysis of the resilience and cost effectiveness of various energy provision portfolios (supply, conversion and storage) in early design stage. Applied in the EMP of a new university satellite campus, comprising of five buildings with mixed energy uses, both the 2050 net-zero emissions and the energy resilience objectives are met by an energy provision portfolio that consists of air source heat pumps for heating and cooling, and a combination of PV panels, purchased green power, standard (non-green) grid power, battery and thermal heat and cold storage tanks – with only a modest 6% increase in costs compared to a reference solution. The case project demonstrates the financial feasibility of a resilient energy system that also meets a net-zero emissions objective.

Several definitions of Zero Energy Buildings (ZEB) exist in literature and different implementations of the term can be found in National laws/regulations. The differences among the Member States in nomenclature and definition of the main indicators often lead to incomparable results and difficulties in transfer and diffusion of technologies across the EU. The paper aims to investigate the topic of ZEB by clarifying the meaning of nearly ZEB and Net ZEB through the application of the definitions in a case study of a high-performance building (certified Passivhaus) located in Sicily, Italy. The house fulfils the requirements of nearly ZEB, according to Italian legislation, and satisfies the Net ZEB’s yearly balance between imported and exported energy. However, the use of shorter calculation time periods highlights the presence of a relatively large mismatch between the time of use and of renewable generation. Finally, the results of the thermal comfort analysis show the achievement of adaptive thermal comfort in summer thanks to the passive features of the building (mass, external thermal insulation, solar protections) and passive techniques for heat removal (night ventilation and ground exchange).