Energy efficient building block design: An exergy perspective Yelda Mert a, * , Nicel Saygın b a Yüzüncü Yıl University, Department of City and Regional Planning, 65080, Van, Turkey b _ Izmir Institute of Technology, Department of City and Regional Planning, 35100, Urla, _ Izmir, Turkey article info Article history: Received 29 November 2015 Received in revised form 16 February 2016 Accepted 20 February 2016 Available online 14 March 2016 Keywords: Energy efficient design Exergy Urban design abstract This study introduces the exergy analysis method into the field of urban planning, in order to find out the amount of energy that can be conserved in a building block when an energy efficient construction design is applied. This was done in four steps. First, energy efficient design parameters were derived from the literature and design alternatives were developed accordingly. Second, data was gathered from the case area for the exergy calculations. Third, exergy analysis of existing building blocks and proposed design alternatives were separately carried out. Finally, the amount of decrease in the exergy loss due to sug- gested energy efficient design was found out. The results show that the exergy efficiency of the existing building blocks is about 2%, while the proposed design alternatives will be around 10e11%. The overall exergy loads of the alternative plans were found as 166.3 W, 225.1 W,142.5 Wand 137.8 W respectively for winter and 105.4 W,140.0 W, 89.9 W and 86.3 W respectively for summer, on a housing unit basis. As a result, the suitability and importance of the exergy analysis on the built environment was proven, by revealing actual and considerable energy conservation and sustainable use of energy through application of energy efficient design parameters. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In recent years, global environmental problems, increasing population, limited nonrenewable energy sources and global climate changes have emphasized that the connection between energy and environment is very strong and relevant. Further- more, the cost of energyewhether for the end-users or multi- national companies-is another major problem, when the global economic positions of the countries and the companies are taken into account. With these in mind, there are various at- tempts to decrease energy production costs and reduce emis- sions for environmental preservation. Attempts to decrease total energy consumption is amongst the major discussions, along with construction of energy efficient devices and systems. In addition to these, cheap, sustainable and renewable energy production is another major study in today's world [21]. When the global energy consumption is investigated for each the sectors, it is seen that 51% of total energy production is used in industry, 20% in transportation, 18% in residential and 12% in commercial sectors [4]. Globally 50% of the total energy consumption and 42% of the total water consumption take place in the construction and usage period of buildings. Furthermore, 50% of the greenhouse gases, 40% of the water pollution and 24% of the air pollution arises from the activities in the built environment [5]. It is interesting that 81% of the residential energy demand is used in the heating of buildings [19]. When “energy efficient planning and design” is considered, what comes to mind is basically a relationship of “land use” and “building design” (Fig. 1) [10,16,17]. Energy efficient planning principles systematically investigate a city at three different scales, which are: the settlement's properties, the building block's prop- erties and the building's properties [13]. While making decisions about land use, the ideas to reduce the effects of climate changes should be considered, ensuring efficient and effective use of energy. It is concluded by Ovalı [16] in her study that 50% of energy consumed in buildings can be conserved in case a climate friendly building and built environment design is applied. Previous studies have documented investigations of two different scales in the literature from an energy efficiency perspective: building scale and building block scale. Numerous studies have also focused on “physical environment design pa- rameters” and “building design parameters.” (Fig. 2) However, there has been relatively little literature published on the use of * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ90 5052356033; fax: þ90 432 2251710. E-mail address: mertyelda@gmail.com (Y. Mert). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Energy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/energy http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2016.02.121 0360-5442/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Energy 102 (2016) 465e472