Energy profiling in the life‐cycle assessment of buildings

Few would deny the centrality of environmental issues to the sustainability agenda. Even a cursory inves-tigation of the existing building environmental assessment methods shows that a building’s energy per-formance is usually a key element in the evaluation process and will constitute a significant portion of the overall assessment result. us, increased lifecycle energy efficiency in buildings lies at the heart of most approaches to sustainable urban design, development and assessment. Advances in information and communication technologies [ICTs] offer the opportunity to increase energy efficiency in the built en-vironment by improving the way energy profiling tools and techniques are used to measure and inform the energy performance of buildings throughout their lifecycle. e exploitation of this potential is one of the goals of a current EU FP7 funded project, entitled ‘intUBE- Intelligent Use of Buildings ’ Energy Information. is paper illustrates how the intUBE project will contribute to improving the measurement and evaluation of building energy performance. e paper also highlights the potential offered by the energy profiling tools and techniques being developed as part of the intUBE project to contribute to the assessment of sustainable urban development.