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ABSTRACT
Buildings are a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions and a leading energy consumer on the market. In Europe, buildings represent about 40% of the overall energy consumption and 36% of the overall CO2 emissions. Forty percent of the world's raw materials are used in buildings.
With the increasing urbanization, the land with permeable layers and moist have been altered. As a result, urban heat island phenomenon has taken place, making the temperature in the cities to be higher than the country sides. Urban Heat island effect is mainly because of unnatural heat absorbing materials used in buildings and other man-made structures.
To protect the environment by reducing the energy consumption of buildings and the heat island effect, various innovative construction solutions can be proposed. Among these solutions, green roof architecture has been increasingly used in new construction projects in major cities. Green roofs effectively contribute to the possible solutions of several environmental problems stemming from buildings and urban development. Green roofs play a major role as a sustainable solution to minimize the urban heat island effect and also the energy consumptions of buildings. Thus, having greenery over the roof or planting on roofs are now becoming popular in many countries. The present paper tries to provide a study of the impact of a green roof on building energy performance of a passive house.
Keywords: thermal comfort, heat transfer, green roof, building energy performance, passive building
INTRODUCTION
Along the years researches have carried out several studies necessary to identify the proper solution for reducing the negative impact that the roof has on the energy performance of the building and also on the environment. It is well known that dark roofs contributes to the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, phenomenon which was first observed in the 19th century by Howard [1], many decades before other scientists. In his work he emphasized the way that urban areas have a negative effect on local climate by detecting, describing and analysing the UHI phenomenon. The increased urbanisation also increased the need of new developments that usually are made on the expense of green areas. The result is a shortage of the green areas, an increased temperature and decreased air humidity, as mentioned by Berndtsson [2].
Several studies...