QEII (Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre)  - London
Research projects to make living more energy efficient currently have great interest. Much knowledge has been gathered indeed in recent years through various demonstration projects, but a final breakthrough has yet to come. This is especially true for affordable, sustainable concepts for the cheaper dwellings. To develop such concepts, a number a research institutes and market players have joined forces, united in Ecobuild Research. Through research in three Ecobuild dwellings (named A, B en C), built on the ground of the Energy research Center of the Netherlands (ECN), the consortium hopes to find the way to sustainable living comfort.

Research topics
In the Ecobuild Research project two main topics of research have been formulated, in order to successfully introduce new concepts to reduce the energy consumption. The topics are "comfort" and "applicability". These topics are to be the foundation of a large scale introduction in the future. It has been established that there are many different technical solutions available to reduce the energy consumption in dwellings. However, it has also been established that there is a strong interaction between the technical solutions and the topics "comfort" and "applicability". Reason to investigate these topics in the Ecobuild Research project.
Objectives & Current status
The Ecobuild Research project consists of two successive phases. In the first, and by now completed phase, the objective was to halve the energy consumption of the house compared to the current building standards (Energy Performance Coëfficiënt EPC = 0,5). This had to be accomplished under the conditions that no concession can be made to comfort and that the dwellings have to be affordable and suitable for large scale introduction. For more information about phase I, see also Ecobuild phase I.
In the fall of 2002, phase II started, with the objective to realise a "zero-energy concept" under the same conditions as mentioned for phase I. For this purpose, both the construction and the installations of the dwellings are changed drastically. Project partners in this second phase are Itho, OTB and ECN. For more information, see Ecobuild fase II.