Inventory of the existing residential building stock for the purpose of environmental benchmarking

Abstract

The current renovation rate in Belgium is less than 1% and should be increased to 2, 5% to reach the European targets to reduce the GHG emissions by 2050. There is a need to rapidly increase the renovation rate and at the same time guarantee that these renovations reduce the environmental impact on our planet. In order to define environmental benchmarks for existing buildings and their renovation targets, a better understanding of the existing building stock is needed. In this paper, the approach used to model the existing building stock is presented for the specific case of Leuven. The methodological steps, challenges and data gaps are presented in detail. The proposed building stock model uses GIS data in order to gain insights in the geospatial distribution of the impacts of the stock. These spatial maps moreover allow to clearly visualise the impacts which can improve communication and contribute to policy actions.