The goal of this report is to quantify and analyze the market opportunity for advanced glazing systems over the next eight years, and it builds on industry analysis that NanoMarkets has carried out in other building products markets such as BIPV and solid-state lighting where "sustainability" and energy efficiency are key. NanoMarkets has been covering such markets for around six years now.
Worldwide Medical Ceramics Markets: 2013 Chapter One
Advanced Glazing Systems Preview
1. NanoMarkets Report
Advanced Glazing Systems Markets – 2012
Nano-571
Published Oct. 2012
2. Advanced Glazing Systems Markets—2012
According to building engineers, backed up by the evidence of infrared photography,
the vast majority of energy loss in buildings is through windows. In an era of rising Page | 1
real energy prices and uncertainties about future energy supply NanoMarkets
believes that a fast growing market for advanced glazing systems can be expected
and that this will create profitable business opportunities for a wide variety of
companies. In this new report, NanoMarkets has identified where these opportunities
can be found and how much they will be worth. The report covers the full range of
high-performance windows systems that provide thermal, visual and IR management
using the latest materials:
In this report, firms in the windows/glazing industry will find a comprehensive
product roadmap for advanced glazing systems showing how windows
products will evolve from the latest generation of highly insulated windows,
through the incorporation of various dynamic glass (aka smart windows)
technologies, and then on to systems with embedded solar and lighting
functionality. Included in the analysis in this report is an examination of some
of the high performance insulated windows and dynamic glass windows
products that are already on the market.
Because of the huge potential addressable market for high-tech windows and
the fact that they are likely to use novel materials, this report also includes a
comprehensive discussion and forecast of how materials needs will change in
the glazing systems market over the next eight years and how materials and
chemical firms can benefit from these changes. Among the materials covered
will be smart materials, photoactive materials, glasses, plastics, framing
materials, sealants, gasses, desiccants, etc.
NanoMarkets also believes that this report will also be of considerable interest
to both the solar panel industry and the solid-state lighting industry. Firms
active in these industries will learn from this report how they can tap into the
expected rapid growth of advanced glazing systems. In particular, we show
how new opportunities will emerge for building-integrated photovoltaics
(BIPV) companies and OLED firms to make money by implanting PV and
lighting layers into high-performance windows products.
This report will also bring considerable insights to corporate planners throughout the
building products and construction industries as well as architects and sophisticated
investors. As with all NanoMarkets reports, this report contains detailed eight-year
forecasts of the markets analyzed in this report in both value ($ millions) and volume
(area) terms. Forecast breakouts are by end-user type, technology, materials used
and geography. In addition, the report contains a thorough analysis of the
product/market strategies of the leading firms currently active in the advanced
glazing space. And both giant firms—such as Alcoa, Saint-Gobain and Bayer—and the
latest startups are included in the coverage.
3. TABLE OF CONTENTS
Executive Summary
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E.1 Summary of Key Drivers for Advanced Glazing Systems
E.2 Technology Roadmap for Advanced Glazing Systems
E.2.1 The Coming Together of Advanced Glazing Systems with Smart Windows, Solar
Panels and Lighting
E.3 Opportunity Analysis for Advanced Glazing Systems
E.3.1 Opportunities for the Windows/Glazing Sector
E.3.2 Opportunities for Materials Firms
E.4 Firms to Watch in the Advanced Glazing Sector
E.5 Summary of Eight-Year Forecasts
Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background to this Report
1.2 Objective and Scope of this Report
1.3 Methodology and Information Sources
1.4 Plan of this Report
Chapter Two: Advanced Glazing System Products and Technologies
2.1 Advance Glazing Systems and Smart Windows: Two Related But Different Opportunities
2.2 Next-Generation Thermally Insulated Windows
2.3 Dynamic Glazing Technologies
2.3.1 Dynamic Thermal Control
2.3.2 Dynamic Vision Control
2.3.3 Advanced IR Control
2.4 Future Integration Directions for Advanced Glazing Systems
2.4.1 Impact of Building-Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) on Smart Glazing Systems
2.4.2 Integrating Smart Lighting into Advanced Glazing Systems
2.5 Materials for Advanced Glazing Systems
2.5.1 Specialist Glasses
2.5.2 Polymers: PET and PVB
2.5.3 Sealants
2.6 Key Takeaways from this Chapter
Chapter Three: Markets and Market Forecasts for Advanced Glazing Systems
3.1 Key Functional Drivers for Advanced Glazing Systems
3.1.1 HVAC Energy Savings
3.1.2 Daylighting
3.1.3 Lowering Construction Costs/Complexity and Maintenance Costs
3.1.4 Noise Reduction
3.1.5 Increased Comfort and Human Productivity
3.2 Advanced Glazing Systems in "Green" and Zero-Energy Buildings
3.2.1 Eight-Year Forecasts of Advanced Glazing Systems for Commercial Buildings
3.2.2 Eight-Year Forecasts of Advanced Glazing Systems for Industrial Buildings
3.2.3 Eight-Year Forecasts of Advanced Glazing Systems for Multi-Tenant Residential
Buildings
4. 3.2.4 Eight-Year Forecasts of Advanced Glazing Systems for Single-Family Residential
Buildings
3.3 Eight-Year Forecasts of Advanced Glazing Systems by Technology
3.3.1 Next-Generation Thermally Insulated Windows
3.3.2 Dynamic Glazing Technologies
3.3.3 Multi-functional Advanced Glazing Systems
Page | 3
3.4 Eight-Year Forecasts by Geographical Region
3.5 Summary of Eight-Year Forecasts of Advanced Glazing System Markets
3.6 Eight-Year Forecasts of Materials for Advanced Glazing Systems
3.7 Key Takeaways from this Chapter
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5. Chapter One: Introduction
1.1 Background to this Report
According to building engineers, backed up by the evidence of infrared photography, the vast
majority of energy loss in buildings is through windows. This general point has been understood Page | 4
th
for a long time; the first double-glazed window was designed in the 19 Century. Double-glazed
windows were widely adopted in the 1950s and 1960s and these older types of systems are now
so widely used that they could never reasonably be called "advanced" glazing systems; they are
far too close to being ubiquitous.
1.1.1 Why Double Glazing Isn't Boring Anymore
Double glazing shipments worldwide are worth billions of dollars annually. But growth of this
traditional business is slow (this is especially so given the woes of the construction industry) and
one would never identify it as an opportunity per se; that is, no one would suggest that "double
glazing" is a business that people should jump into as a way of making big money. It has been at
least 30 years since someone could seriously make such a claim. In one trade press article that
NanoMarkets retrieved as part of the research for this report, the double glazing industry was
portrayed as "boring," which seems to NanoMarkets to be a fairly reasonable characterization of
the glazing industry considered as a whole.
But in the past few years—perhaps as long as five years—there are signs that the double-glazing
business has started to become much less boring. What we are seeing—or at least beginning to
see—is this sector begin to clearly transcend the "double glazing" name or even the (more
general) "insulated glazing" name. There seems to be a new business emerging that is more
deserving of the name "advanced glazing systems," a name that seems to capture the sense of
novel technologies playing an important role.
What has happened here seems to us to be much more than a shift in industry semantics brought
about by changing times and marketing approaches. Instead, we are talking a real shift in
direction brought about by changing demand patterns and novel technologies. Such a change is
surely deserving of a new name; so surely the "advanced glazing systems" epithet is a good one
to use.
1.1.2 On Demand, Technology and Advanced Glazing Systems
On the demand side of the equation, the changes that we are talking about are pretty much
common knowledge. For a number of reasons, energy has become more valuable and therefore
ways of conserving energy themselves have a higher value:
Advanced glazing systems seem to be a way to conserve energy and in a high-priced
energy environment they take on growing commercial significance and appear to address
larger markets
Although related in part to the growing cost of energy mentioned above, NanoMarkets
believes that the market for advanced glazing systems is also getting a boost from a more
general societal environment in developed countries where a significant part of the
population is concerned about "environmentalism," in a general sense.
6. Advanced glazing systems stand to benefit from this meme because they can be
marketed as meeting the psychological needs associated with "environmentalism," and
because (more objectively) they fit round with the growing number of building codes and
standards that have emerged/are emerging built around environmentalist and energy
saving needs.
Page | 5
These new demand patterns that NanoMarkets has identified are accompanied by important
technological developments too. As we have suggested above, the new highly insulated glazing
systems that were described at the beginning of this account are sufficiently different from more
conventional windows product to consider them a new kind of product.
But the likely technological evolution of advanced glazing systems, NanoMarkets believes, seems
likely to go well beyond simply a radical performance improvement to include a much higher level
of functionality for advanced glazing systems. These new directions will succeed, NanoMarkets
believes, because they are very much in tune with the demand patterns we have already
explained.
Among the technological patterns in the advanced glazing systems business are the ones that are
discussed below.
Incorporation of smart windows concepts into advanced glazing systems: In this context
smart windows are usually referred to as "dynamic glazing." And a shift to dynamic glazing is
already beginning to be noticeable, at least in the sense that this idea is receiving a lot of attention
in glazing industry trade magazines and at high-profile trade shows.
Apart from the fact that not many construction firms and architects have yet been sold on
advanced glazing systems, this technology is not all that mature. However, dynamic glazing
technologies are improving and add a new dimension of both thermal and lighting control to the
advanced glazing concept.
BIPV integration into advanced glazing systems: Similarly drawing on the latest developments
and materials used in BIPV and incorporating them into advanced glazing systems seems like an
intelligent product design move for the future. BIPV could power dynamic glazing or be used as a
more general power source for the building thereby better enabling zero-energy buildings. The
building owner, manager or occupant would also benefit from the economies of integration implicit
in this kind of integration.
One might think that BIPV integration into advanced glazing systems might occur before the
incorporation of dynamic glass. BIPV glass is a relatively mature technology that is being
supported by stable firms, some of which are quite large. Nonetheless, NanoMarkets has yet to
see much commercial activity in this space, beyond some stirring in the BIPV community.
Lighting integration into advanced glazing systems: A similar trend is possible for lighting;
that is to say in the future we may see lighting built into windows, which might, for example,
become panel lights at night and more conventional windows during the day. More complex
arrangements that let in some light while artificial lighting is also used are also possible. And, of
course, the lighting involved in such arrangements could be on the inside or outside of the
building or both.
7. Of all the possible technological trends that we discuss here, this suggestion is probably the most
speculative, because the technology to accomplish it is not really with us yet. OLEDs—given
better encapsulation—may serve quite well in the future in an advanced glazing system into which
lighting has been built, but the technology has some way to go before it could work well in a
commercial window/lighting panel such as that described above.
Page | 6
Building management systems and advanced glazing systems: Although it seems unlikely to
happen fast, we also believe that some money will be made along the way by integrating active
glazing systems into building energy management systems of various kinds:
Building energy management systems have been around for years, but have never really
taken off to the degree that was once anticipated. However, there are some recent signs
that this may be beginning to change under much the same influences that we have
identified for advanced glazing systems themselves. If active/smart glazing systems
begin to take off in the marketplace, then it is reasonable to assume that building
management systems will quickly be interfaced to them.
Lighting management systems—sometimes called smart lighting systems—are another
type of control system that may be interfaced to active glazing systems where lighting is
an emphasized functionality of such systems.
We have yet to see any real trends towards building energy or lighting management systems
incorporating the management of active glazing systems, but this would seem to be inevitable if
advanced glazing systems of this kind start to be widely used.
1.1.3 Who Will Profit from Advanced Glazing Systems Market
In other words, what NanoMarkets believes is going to happen over the next few years is that
advanced glazing will take on more functionalities and that in doing so, "advanced glazing" as a
product category will come to overlap with a number of other product categories and markets. In
Exhibit 1-1 we summarize the opportunities available to various players in the advanced glazing
space.
9. associate with windows. While this trend has yet to have much impact we think that it will
be an important revenue producer in the next two to three years.
Solar panel and solid-state lighting firms: NanoMarkets also believes that increasingly the
kind of advanced glazing systems that we have discussed above will become of growing interest
to both the solar panel industry and (a bit later) to the solid-state lighting industry. Firms active in
Page | 8
these industries will have the opportunity to tap into the expected rapid growth of advanced
glazing systems. In particular, in this area, it seems likely that new opportunities will emerge for
BIPV companies and OLED firms to make money by implanting PV and lighting layers into high-
performance windows products.
Service provider beneficiaries: Service provider firms that NanoMarkets expects to see benefit
from the appearance on the market of more advanced glazing system products include
construction firms and architects. Both of these groups could use of advanced glazing systems to
market buildings to future owners, managers and occupants. Energy efficiency and enhanced
comfort are proven winners in marketing to these groups.
1.2 Objective and Scope of this Report
The goal of this report is to quantify and analyze the market opportunity for advanced glazing
systems over the next eight years, and it builds on industry analysis that NanoMarkets has carried
out in other building products markets such as BIPV and solid-state lighting where "sustainability"
and energy efficiency are key. NanoMarkets has been covering such markets for around six
years now.
"Advanced glazing systems" is a concept that does not have a strict definition, although we note
that it is sometimes construed fairly narrowly to include just highly insulated glazing units (IGUs).
However, in this report, we have taken the term to mean something broader than that and to
include (1) active glazing products and (2) futuristic multi-functional windows, in our definition.
Item (2) is something of a catch-all category since most of the products that logically belong in this
category do not yet exist. Within each of these categories, we have examined what differing
product and materials strategies would mean for the scale and evolution of market opportunities.
With regard to end-user markets, those that we discuss most extensively are commercial and
industrial buildings, especially the latter. Most of the windows systems we consider here are high-
performance and high-priced systems that are designed for large buildings, so this is where most
of the revenues in the advanced glazing systems market are likely to be earned in the next eight
years. In fact, it is specifically the commercial sector that is likely to see most of advanced glazing
systems market, because industrial buildings often have a minimal number of windows;
sometimes none at all.
This is not to say that NanoMarkets sees no opportunities for advanced glazing systems in the
residential sector and we do include some discussion on residential markets, especially multi-
tenant residential buildings which have important business characteristics in common with
commercial buildings from the perspective of a glazing provider
Several issues are not the focus of the report:
We do not have much to say about the windows industry as a whole. As a highly mature
sector, it operates under entirely different economics than the markets that are the main
10. focus of this report. In particular, we don't have that much to say about the conventional
double-glazing industry, beyond acknowledging that this is the industry from which the
highly insulated glazing units that are discussed in this report are emerging.
Much of this report is taken up with discussions of how certain new energy-efficiency
technologies will be integrated into glazing systems over the next decade. However, Page | 9
these technologies—BIPV, OLEDs, building management systems, and so on—are not
discussed in any depth. NanoMarkets has other reports that look into these technologies
and in these reports, NanoMarkets pulls out the full range of opportunities related to
them.
This report is worldwide in its scope. However, throughout this report, we discuss the differences
among regional and national markets.
In particular, we have given some emphasis to European markets for advanced glazing
systems, since the rules, regulations and building codes in Europe are very friendly to the
kinds of products considered in this report.
Other reasons for focusing to some extent on regional or national differences is that
regulatory factors and conditions in the construction industry can vary quite a lot from
place to place, not to mention taste/architectural factors of importance to the windows
business. Obviously, space does not allow full coverage of matters as complex as
regulation and national construction markets. Rather, we try to point out the impact of
general trends in important/regions and countries.
As with all novel building technologies, the economics of including advanced glazing systems are
better with new construction than with retrofits, we discuss both opportunities in the main body of
this report. We also assess the current strategies of firms already pursuing the advanced glazing
systems as well as likely entrants.
And as with all NanoMarkets reports, this report contains granular eight-year forecasts in both
square meters and dollar terms of advanced glazing systems markets, with breakouts by end
user, type of product and type of advanced glazing technology.
1.3 Methodology and Information Sources
The information for this work is derived from a variety of sources, but comes from both primary
and secondary sources:
As far as the former goes, NanoMarkets has carried out extensive interviewing of
business development managers and technologists involved with most of the products
and markets considered in this report. In particular, NanoMarkets has an ongoing
program of interviewing executives in the general area of efficient and environmentally
friendly lighting and building materials
As with other NanoMarkets reports, we have also drawn on important secondary
resources for information. These include technical literature, relevant company Web sites,
trade journals, government resources, and various collateral items from trade shows and
conferences.
11. Some of the material in this report has also been taken from earlier NanoMarkets reports,
including our reports on PV, BIPV, smart windows and (to a limited extent) we have also
taken it from some of our OLED lighting and glass industry reports, in other words from
NanoMarkets reports that address advanced building materials in one form or another.
However, where information has been used from an earlier report, it has been
reinvestigated, reanalyzed, and reconsidered in light of current developments and Page | 10
updated accordingly.
The forecasting approach taken in this report is explained in more detail in Chapter Three, but the
basic approach taken here is to identify and quantify the underlying needs and markets that are
served by BIPV walling products; consider the specifics of the applications and the types of
products available or under development; and assess the competitive landscape to determine the
suitability and likely volume of each of the BIPV types over the next eight years.
The stated plans of the key firms in the advanced glazing systems market are of course of special
interest, although NanoMarkets critically considers these claims in light of all available data.
1.4 Plan of this Report
This report is divided into four chapters. The Executive Summary above is intended to set out in
detail where NanoMarkets believes the main opportunities for revenue generation are in the
general area of advanced glazing systems. Meanwhile, this Chapter—as its title suggests—is
intended to introduce the topic of advanced glazing systems markets and what it might have in
store.
In Chapter Two we take an in-depth look at the evolution of advanced glazing systems technology
and products and how these are being shaped—and are shaping—market demand. This chapter
also focuses on how technologies being developed in the context of other markets—especially
smart windows, lighting and solar panels—are transforming the windows business.
In Chapter Three we examine in depth the markets for advanced glazing systems and the key
drivers in each of these markets. Also included in this Chapter are market forecasts in volume
and value terms and breakouts by type of advanced glazing product and type of application.