Improving the energy efficiency of typical public buildings intended for education purposes located in the temperate climate zone in central and Eastern Europe

Energy consumption, including for heating, air conditioning, hot water, and lighting, contributes a very large share of the economic balance of public buildings. This article analyzes ways to improve the energy efficiency of a public building from the 1970s, located in the third climatic zone between 51 and 53° north latitude and 19–21° east longitude in Central and Eastern Europe (in the center of Poland), where the calculation temperature is −20 °C. It is a typical school building with a traditional brick structure. The building underwent thermal modernization in the early twenty-first century, which included insulating the building partitions and replacing the windows. The aim of the article is to indicate the possibilities of improving the energy efficiency of buildings that have already undergone thermal modernization Calculations of basic energy indicators EP and EK were made for the existing state and for the proposed changes. The results were compared with other research on public buildings for education purposes. Before the proposed actions, renewable energy sources contributed 0 % of the annual final energy demand of the building. After the proposed changes, this share would increase to over 23 %. The volume of CO2 emissions would decrease by over 70 %, from 0.101 tons of CO2/m2 per year to 0.029 tons of CO2/m2 per year. These results clearly demonstrate the benefits of using renewable energy sources for this type of building, in terms of both economic savings and the reduction of CO2 emissions, which is in line with efforts to combat climate change.