The Importance of Heat Insulation of Dwellings in Turkey for Energy Efficiency

Abstract

Minimum energy use and minimum environmental pollution are two important basic criteria for achieving environmental sustainability and raising awareness of "design for everybody" approach. Investigating suitable ways of decreasing energy use in life-cycle of buildings gains great importance especially in developing countries. Turkey is an outstanding example of developing countries with its increasing rate of industrialization and urbanization. Although these processes cause more energy to be used, in the last decade it is an accepted fact that the amount of energy and resource use has to be decreased as much as possible. There are some restrictive measures such as Law no 5627 on the Energy Efficiency in order to limit the large amount of energy usage especially in residential areas. According to this Law every building having a total area more than 1000 m2 has to have an Energy Identification Card which includes knowledge about the energy performance of the building. In the light of these, the aim of the study is to evaluate the experiences of Turkey in the field of energy efficiency in order to develop some proposals for further research. The study consists of four sections including a brief introduction about the importance of energy efficiency for a sustainable future. The second section explains the vital importance of heat insulation for the efficient use of energy via some examples. The third section investigates the related Laws and legislations in Turkey and examines the studies undertaken. The paper lasts with a conclusion discussing the real situation in Turkey and proposing some strategies for the future studies in the field of energy efficiency both in physical and socio-cultural terms.