This course is focused on teaching the students how a high performance envelope is designed based on the local weather conditions, building orientation and building use. The course starts with the heat, air and moisture transfer mechanisms that occur within the building envelope. Then selecting the best thermal resistance and thermal inertia combination for building envelops walls is given. The selection of the windows regarding its thermal transmittance, solar heat gains and how to optimize the solar shadowing or reflecting systems are also studied. To finalize the course, different solar active and passive building envelope solutions are presented and explained such as: green roofs and walls, Building Integrated photovoltaic systems, ventilated façades, etc.

This course is focused on showing the students how high performance Heating Ventilating and Air Conditioning systems are designed based on the local weather conditions, building orientation and building use. The course starts with the psychometrics while thermal comfort within buildings with high performance envelope is then given. The selection and correct sizing of ventilation systems is learned. Conventional high performing heating and air conditioning systems are studied. Correct sizing and correct selection of equipment are learned. How this conventional system can be combined with renewable energies will be also studied in detail.

This course is focused on teaching the students how renewable energies can be installed and connected to the building HVAC systems. Best choices of renewable energies based on the local weather conditions, building orientation, building use. The selection and correct sizing of renewable energy systems for buildings will be learned. The focus will be on three renewable technologies: solar heating and cooling systems, biomass heating systems and geothermal/aerothermal heating and cooling systems. Special attention will be given on how these three technologies can be combined to obtain the optimal renewable system for the building. The way the renewable energies are connected to conventional HVAC systems is also a key point of this course.

This course is focused on acquiring fundamental and advanced concepts in building physics. Variables and parameters that have impact in the thermal behaviour of the building or HVAC systems will be analysed and assessed by its implementation on a Building Energy Simulation tool. This information will be used to design a nZeb building or to improve an existing building energy efficiency.

This course is focused on teaching the students how energy audits are carried out to a building, as well as the main basis on energy certificates in buildings. As far as energy audits is concern, it will presented a methodology for developing them, what sort of information can be obtained and how this information can be analysed. Regarding energy certification schemes, the energy certification scheme will be presented, taking into consideration the European regulations. The students will also learn how the certification process works for new or existing buildings based on the transposition of the European Directive on the Spanish law, showing how the European Directives has been transposed into the national regulation of a Member State (Spain), and then making the understanding of the process in any other Member State easier for students.

This course has the goal of presenting an overview on how the global strategies on energy and climate have evolved in the last decades and how this has defined the evolution of the different strategies and roadmaps (in general, but mainly focused on the European Context), as well as the main instruments developed for implementing them, i.e. policy development and research actions. This approach is done focusing on the relation with the urban environment and smart cities (energy efficiency in buildings and communities, urban mobility, renewable energy systems implementation, energy communities…), as well as on other related issues such as European strategies on tackling energy poverty. All of this is presented under a comprehensive perspective where the interaction amongst economic, technical, environmental and social dimensions is taken into consideration.

This course is focused on teaching the students how the life cycle analysis to product, building or district gives a broad understanding on the energy and resources requirements from the design phase until this is demolished after its service life period. This study permits to accomplish the study of sustainability (environmental  / economic / social) from the design to its demolition.

This course is focused on teaching the students how building components and whole buildings can be energetically characterized. The characterization of building components can be done under steady-state conditions for conventional walls and windows through the standardized guarded hot box method. But also under real climatic conditions using Dynamic Calculation Methods for Building Energy Performance Assessment. Characterizing in-use buildings is the other focus of this course and techniques developed recently are given to understand how in-use buildings can be characterized energetically by some Key Performance Indicators, such as Heat Loss Coefficient of the building, equivalent solar apertures.

This course focuses on assessing the main challenges for energy transition that may be encountered at the local level. To mitigate the climate crisis, the need for a rapid energy transition is more than evident. However, this transition faces numerous technical, environmental and social challenges that will be addressed in the course. Aspects such as the energy metabolism of municipalities and communities, municipal resource management, energy poverty, governance issues and energy democracy, local energy communities and cooperatives will be assessed using practical examples. In addition, different coordinated initiatives, such as the Global Covenant of Mayors, will be presented.

The objective of this course is to teach transient simulation of ventilation systems for the analysis of air movement and the transport of pollutants in buildings. Airflow rates between outdoors and  indoors,  and  airflow  rates  between  the  rooms  of  the  building,  in  addition  to  the  concentration  of pollutants in each room of the building. In this way, it will be possible to analyze the behavior of different types  of  ventilation  systems:  continuous  and  demand-controlled  ventilation.  For  this,  the  multi-zone formulation  for  the  contaminant  dispersal  and  airflow  analysis  is  established,  the  data  needed  to construct the model will be defined and the models used will be described. To complete the course, a simulation case will be presented using the CONTAM software developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The evaluation exercise will consist of simulating an apartment for analyzing the evolution of the concentration of the most representative pollutants and the airflow rate in each room of the apartment.