Application and validation of a method to assess the energy reduction and environmental impact of renovation alternatives

Abstract

The renovation of residential stock is one of the most promising areas, in terms of energy reduction, because these buildings are highly inefficient and represent the largest part of the building stock. However, the environmental impact assessment over the life cycle of building renovation is rare. It is more common to develop an assessment for new buildings. This study presents a method that combines the evaluation of the benefits of renovating residential buildings, considering cost, energy and environmental benefits using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The method is based on 3 stages of development. First, the database of energy certificates, costs and LCA was analysed. The second step is to develop a workflow in Rhino/Grasshopper/E-Plus to automatically model a residential building and feed the simulation model with the data obtained from the databases. Finally, a simulation campaign was carried out to obtain an optimal renovation package, minimising energy consumption and environmental impact. The research was carried out in a case study in Uddevalla, Sweden. The residential building has different measurements including energy consumption data before and after renovation. This was used to validate the proposed methodology. The validation shows that accurate results are achievable with potential for mass application.