Please find below some interesting links concerning the energy efficiency in the building sector:

• The HOPE project studies the influence of low energy buildings on comfort and on health. The final will help create a manual for healthy buildings, offer advice, aid CEN on the development of building standards, and influence the development of a website enabling the comparison to buildings measured. For more information please see: HOPE

 
• Green Hotel is a demonstration project financed by the European Commission. The latest knowledge of energy efficiency, water use and energy production is being applied to a high quality eco-hotel in Madeira. For more information please see: Green Hotel Madeira.

 
• An online resource providing state-of-the-art information on innovation in advanced facades, heating, cooling, ventilation and lighting systems to support preliminary design of energy-efficient buildings. A worldwide consortium of professionals, universities (us including), and research organizations support this effort and provide information for the site: BuildingEnvelopes.ORG

 
• A tool for facilitating information exchange between building material providers and building physics softwares. E4tech, together with the building material providers Flumroc, Isover, Morandi, Pavatex, Swisspor, Tuileries de Fribourg et Lausanne and with a contribution of the Fraunhofer Institute, developed a new open source format in XML (Extensible Markup Language). The new tool allows providers to manage independently their own building material database and does not require a central database. The building physics softwares can access the various decentralised databases via a DLL (Dynamic Link Library). www.MaterialsDB.org

 
• American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers: ASHRAE