Kazakhstan is country rich in energy resources, but to raise the living standards of the country’s population, the government regulates prices of heating energy, which are significantly lower comparing to those in the global energy market. Such an approach encourages the construction of residential buildings without concern for their energy efficiency, which significantly increases energy consumption in the sector and leads to the increase of greenhouse gas emissions into the environment. Therefore, the aim of this study was to analyze the impact of regulated low prices of heating energy on long-term energy use in buildings, to determine optimal levels of building thermal insulation at current energy prices and following global energy price trends, and to demonstrate the impact of more efficient building thermal insulation on heating energy consumption from a long-time perspective. The cost-optimal method used in EU countries was chosen for the optimization of building thermal insulation and energy consumption to compare the impact of energy prices on the optimal thermal insulation of buildings. The results of the study showed that maintaining low energy prices hinders the implementation of energy-efficient solutions in buildings and does not provide an economic justification for prolonging the heating season by ensuring the quality of the indoor microclimate. As a practical result of this study, a recommendation was made to introduce optimal thermal insulation requirements in building regulations and to redistribute part of the energy subsidies for implementation of energy-efficient measures in the residential building sector.

The ventilated facade systems are widely used for improvement of energy efficiency and reducing of heat losses of newly built buildings and for existing buildings. To reduce the influence of point thermal bridges on heat transfer through the ventilated facades, previous often used aluminium alloy connectors as a change to stainless steel and reinforced plastic connectors. Different thermal characteristics of connectors using in ventilated facade systems, significantly influence the heat transfer coefficient of building’s walls. Previous empirical calculations of the heat transfer through ventilated facade walls with different connectors according to standard methodology and numerical modelling showed significant differences in results, therefore experimental research with the fragments of the ventilated facade systems were carried out using a guarded hotbox method.The aim of this experimental research was to analyse the heat flows through the ventilated wall system with different kind of heat-conductive connectors. Expanded polystyrene foam (λ – 0,031 W/(m∙K)) was used as thermal insulation material, thickness 300 mm, and three types of heat-conductive connections were installed: aluminum alloy (λ - 160 W/(m∙K)), stainless steel (λ - 17 W/(m∙K)) and glass fiber reinforced plastic (λ – 0,23 W/(m∙K)).The measurements in the guarded hotbox were useful for analysis of differences in results according to the standard and numerical calculations methods. The experimental studies showed that the results are very close to the numerical simulation results. The empirical calculation method gave similar results to the other two methods, except in the case of highly heat-conductive connectors.