About
Irene Poza is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Architectural Constructions of the E.T.S. Architecture of Universidad de Valladolid and member of the Research Grupo “Architecture & Energy”. She got her PhD at Universidad de Valladolid (2021) developing her research work on the field of airtightness of the building envelope, air infiltration in buildings, and its energy impact, supervised by Alberto Meiss and Jesús Feijó. International collaboration must be highlighted after a four-month stay at Faculdade de Engenharia of the Universidade do Porto (Portugal) during her predoctoral research activity (2019), and a postdoctoral stay at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 2022. The results of her research activity have been published in high-impact indexed journals, having a h-index (WOS) of 7, and 170 citations. Currently she is looking forward to keeping on working with her colleagues on this research line, which she finds fascinating.
Building energy retrofit. An experience of airtightness diagnosis and characterization of the building stock
Abstract
Around 35% of the EU’s buildings are over 50 years old and almost 75% of the building stock is energy inefficient. Therefore, it is essential to establish strategies that support the renovation of national buildings stocks, facilitating their transformation into nZEB in order to achieve the EU decarbonization goals for 2050. Air infiltration is a phenomenon that involves energy loss and is also related to the ventilation of buildings and, thus, has an impact on indoor air quality (IAQ). In this sense, the airtightness characterization of the envelope of existing buildings is essential to prioritize efforts and determine strategies for the renovation of the existing building stock. This lecture will show the importance of airtightness in the energy performance of buildings and will provide an overview of the recent experience in Spain.