Issues to be Improved on the Thermal Performance Standards for Sustainable Buildings Consolidation: An Overview of Brazil

The Residential buildings have a great importance on the increased demand for electrical energy that grows with population increase and urban development, especially in countries such as Brazil with a growing population. In this case, the requirements addressed in the building standards are relevant to ensure the suitability of the envelope thermal performance and, consequently,upgrade the building energy performance. The Brazilian standardsin thermal and building energy efficiency are relatively new and their application still points out to the necessity of improvements. Therefore, this paper analyzed those building thermal performance requirements according their prescriptive and simulation methods. The present study aims to explicit the differences between these two methods and also addresses the efficacy of the standard requirements to consolidate a better residential building thermal and energy performance in Brazil. As a result, some improvement considerations are proposed for those standards.