Towards a sustainable refurbishment of the hellenic residential building stock

Abstract

European residential buildings are responsible for over a quarter of the total final energy use and can have a pivotal role in the success of Europe’s energy efficiency targets and climate change mitigation efforts. Several European directives and national regulations have introduced more strict energy performance requirements for new buildings. However, in order to reach the ambitious target of a decarbonised building stock by 2050, the focus is progressively shifted on the renovation of existing buildings. Building stock modelling is a valuable tool for mapping the current state and for accessing different energy conservation measures towards the national targets for 2030 and beyond. This work exploits a bottom-up model for the Hellenic residential building stock to estimate the energy use and access energy savings from various measures and renovation rates towards 2030. The calculations assess the energy performance of typical buildings, and the results are then projected to the building stock. For more realistic estimates of the energy use, the predictions are adapted using updated empirical factors. The model estimates the actual energy use for heating and domestic hot water with acceptable accuracy when compared against officially reported data. The results from the analysis of various scenarios reveal that the 2030 target may be reached with combined measures that improve the envelope and system performance, with relatively high annual renovation rates.