Energy efficiency at the building and district levels in a multi-energy context

Increasing environmental concerns are encouraging new building energy efficiency (EE) concepts defined as reductions in net consumption of electricity, heat, gas and/or other energy vectors. Thanks to the smart grid paradigm, this is increasingly being achieved via the installation of low carbon technologies. However, this approach can be severely limited due to the physical and technical constraints of particular buildings (e.g., limited space to install technologies and limited energy network connection capacity). This paper proposes a more effective approach by explicitly including all relevant multi-energy flows in the EE concept and extending its scope to the district level. This paradigm shift allows energy flows to be produced and consumed in the most effective locations. The benefits from extending the scope of different EE concepts (e.g., based on electricity, electricity and heat, and all vectors) from the building to the district level are illustrated with a real UK multi-energy system.