Best practices of quality assurance for Net Zero Energy Building Design

High-performance buildings including net-zero energy buildings (NZEB) are facing difficulty to become market mainstream in warm and hot climates. Besides the economic there are serious technical and design challenges that hamper design teams design, construct and operate NZEB. There is a difficulty to assure design quality and make concepts to get implemented as ultra-energy-efficient building concepts. There is a need for setting quality assurance criteria and design reviews to guarantee achieving the energy efficiency target metrics for NZEBs. This paper presents guidance and recommendations on the necessary performance target metrics for NZEBs and makes them explicit. Results are based on cross-analysis of several case studies, presenting an overview of challenges and providing recommendations based on available empirical evidence to further lower those barriers Worldwide with a focus on the European construction sector. By defining the performance thresholds for NZEBs including the metrics we offer the design team the possibility of verification and design assessment during early design decision-making phases to instill a kind of practical, evidence-based, and quantifiable guidance for high-performance buildings and in particular NZEBs.