6.4.2.1 Insulation

The choice of insulation material needs to maximize long-term thermal performance of the building element overall. As mentioned previously, this involves consideration of remaining thermal bridges and any water ingress, or other factor, which could result in deterioration of performance over time. For existing buildings, space may be at a premium and the most efficient insulation materials may be needed to minimize thicknesses required. Where upgrading of existing elements is essentially voluntary, minimization of cost and disturbance is equally important and a range of post-applied technologies can be considered, including cavity wall insulation, spray foams and rolled loft insulation. Only a few specific applications with effective control of end-of life emissions have been identified in which foams containing high GWP blowing agents will lead to lower overall climate impacts than hydrocarbon or CO₂ solutions. However, where this is the case, care should still be taken to optimize life-cycle management techniques in order to minimize blowing agent emissions (see 6.4.15).

6.4.2.2 Windows

The thermal performance of windows has improved greatly through the use of multiple glazing layers, low-conductivity gases (argon in particular) between glazing layers, low-emissivity coatings on one or more glazing surfaces and use of framing materials (such as extruded fibreglass) with very low conductivity. Operable (openable) windows are available with heat flows that have only 25–35% of the heat loss of standard non-coated double-glazed (15 to 20% of single-glazed) windows. Glazing that reflects or absorbs a large fraction of the incident solar radiation reduces solar heat gain by up to 75%, thus reducing cooling loads. In spite of these technical improvements, the costs of glazing and windows has remained constant or even dropped in real terms (Jakob and Madlener, 2004). A major U.S. Department of Energy program is developing electrochromic and gasochromic windows which can dynamically respond to heating and cooling in different seasons.