Zero emission embassies in different climatic zones

The Foreign Ministry of Germany plans improve the energy efficiency of their embassy buildings all over the world and wants to present therewith the high potential of German building technologies. As lighthouses zero emission embassies in different climate zones are foreseen. The starting pont were easibility studies for zero emission embassies in different countries such as Australia (Canberra) and the United Arabian Emirates (Abi Dhabi), which were performed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics. While the building in Abu Dhabi is planned to be a new construction, the existing Australian embassy shall be retrofitted to become a highly energy efficient building. The climate on the other hand is more difficult in Abu Dhabi as it requires the building systems to provide much more cooling fort he building. After the analysis of the climate and the current status of the embassy building in Canberra an energy concept to reach the level of zero emission was developed. The combined measures include improvements at the building envelope and the shading system, geothermal energy for heating and cooling and PV installations on the roof. The planned energy concept fort he new embassy in the United Arabian Emirates is composed of partly different measures and focuses more on the cooling issue. The paper will present the boundary conditions in the two different embassy locations and the planned energy concepts with the different energy efficient measures at the buildings.