Purpose
The purpose of this research is to estimate the renovation potential of a city’s building stock and evaluate the environmental impact reduction and greenhouse gas emission reduction realized ...by clustered renovation. These reductions are compared to the climate goals for 2050 by the city of Leuven, i.e., 81% reduction in CO
2
-eq. compared to 2011 to support the development of an optimal renovation strategy for the city.
Methods
The building stock of Leuven is analyzed and subdivided into various clusters of buildings with a similar renovation potential. This paper presents the existing status of one cluster consisting of terraced buildings built between 1946 and 1970 and assesses its required renovation measures using a life cycle approach by applying the Belgian LCA method for buildings. The environmental impact of this cluster and the potential reductions obtained by the renovation are upscaled and compared to the city climate goals. Based on these results, the total impact of this cluster on the greenhouse gas emissions of Leuven is calculated and the most impactful renovation measures identified.
Results and discussion
The results reveal that renovating the walls, floors, and roofs of the houses in this cluster in Leuven (representing ca. 5% of the stock) can lead to a reduction in CO
2
-eq. emissions of 0.9 to 1.9% compared to the emissions by Leuven households in 2011. This estimate ignores the improvement of the airtightness and the renewal of heating systems. So, higher reductions may be possible. The renovation impact of each of the building elements is evaluated separately, indicating that the highest improvements can be obtained by improving the insulation level of the walls. A sensitivity on the original state of the building has been performed by assuming the absence of (a small) insulation layer in the original roof state. This reveals a significant higher CO
2
-eq. reduction potential due to renovation.
Conclusions
The results demonstrate the appropriateness of the clustering approach in estimating the greenhouse gas emissions of a certain housing type and the potential contribution of renovating these to reduce the city greenhouse gas emissions. By extending this analysis to all identified clusters, the full potential of renovating the housing stock in Leuven can be estimated and can help in setting priorities in the overall goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
This research presents a decision support method for housing managers to identify the most appropriate renovation strategy, which combines a multi-criteria assessment of ten renovation factors ...together with an economic feasibility analysis. In contrast to the majority of decision support systems, this method not only assesses the impact of the renovation proposals, but also includes and evaluates the management of the renovation process through a procedure of quantifying and weighting multiple social, technical, and economic variables related to the renovation work. The method, based on two representative cases of housing renovation projects in Sweden, has been designed and tested and is also applicable to other locations, multi-family buildings, and ownership models. Via a graphical display, the results show the impact generated during the work, the benefits obtained after the interventions, and the economic feasibility in different timeframes of each design strategy, which supports housing owners’ decision-making and promotes feasible and suitable actions from a multidisciplinary approach. The conclusions highlight the possibility of implementing renovation strategies at various levels and provide policy implications of this method for a cleaner operation in the building sector with responsible management of urban regeneration by generating sustainable renovation rates and satisfactory proposals.
•Decision support method for housing renovation to select appropriate strategies.•Multi-criteria assessment and feasibility study related to the renovation process.•Iterative design and testing of the method based on two reference cases from Sweden.•Display of impacts, benefits and profitability of different action proposals.•Practical perspectives and policy implications to achieve cleaner renovation rates.
The housing stock has a considerable share of 40% in energy consumption and 36% of CO2 emissions in the EU. In accordance to energy efficiency and emissions targets set by EU, The Netherlands has ...aimed to renovate 300,000 homes each year, leading to 50% reduction in CO2 emissions, by 2050. Many factors including low renovation rates create uncertainties in achieving these targets. The current study aims for understanding the barriers and drivers towards energy efficiency renovations (EERs) amongst Dutch homeowners, and to aid in gaining a better insight into the role of public authorities in promoting EERs. First, the extrinsic drivers, including policies and other initiatives in the EER process are explained. Second, the intrinsic drivers and intrinsic/extrinsic barriers are explored. Regression analyses are performed on the national Dutch survey data for renovators and potential renovators. Our main findings include: (a) desire to enhance the quality of their life, rather than the financial benefits, etc. is identified as the main driver; (b) the main barriers are the costs of EERs, complexities in the process, information barriers, and finding reliable experts and information; (c) For improvement in meeting renovation targets, the current Dutch policies need to consider all the decision criteria by homeowners, such as: Reducing the complexities; Time needed to obtain loans and subsidies; and Facilitating access to information.
•It theoretically investigates the barriers and drivers toward energy efficiency renovations.•It identifies transaction costs in the homeowners' energy efficiency decision-making processes.•Logistic regression analysis to study and model the barriers and drivers to achieve energy targets.•It analyses the energy performance of the Dutch housing stock, using the Dutch national survey.•It explains and compares the barriers and drivers for the renovators and potential renovators.
Notions of authenticity lie at the heart of many questions about heritage and identity in the built environment. These questions are most pertinent when buildings have been destroyed in disaster or ...war, and the built fabric is being reconstructed to reinstate traditional or historic appearances in place of what was lost. Authentic Reconstruction examines this idea of reconstruction, using it as a prompt to examine a range of deeper issues on heritage and the built environment. From post-WWII reconstruction programmes through to the rebuilding of historic cultural landscapes lost in natural disasters, this collection of essays by heritage specialists provides a wide range of case-studies and discussions. Each presents responses to crises and lessons learned, in order to extrapolate general guidelines for future actions by politicians, architects and planners in reconstructing buildings. The book also looks beyond disaster and war, noting how authenticity bears on political intentions and image building, exploring how reconstruction is used to tell a political or historical story, so conditioning the ways in which the built environment is perceived and appreciated by its users. This is not just about the buildings as bricks and mortar, but about perceptions of identity and the social and historical values which buildings and spaces embody for a richly diverse population. This book will be valuable to all who are concerned with heritage as practitioners or consumers, particularly those concerned with reconstruction and the creation of authentic places and experiences: architects, architectural historians, town planners, preservationists, conservationists, and those involved in heritage management and material culture.
ABSTRACTA significant portion of energy consumption currently derives from the building stock, which has harms both the environment and the living standard of occupants, while at the European level, ...the renovation rate of the current building stock remains low. This study presents a methodology for automated retrofitting scenarios in buildings that enhances user awareness through meaningful visualisations and fosters collaboration of renovation professionals with interoperable software solutions. Commercial design software (Autodesk Revit, Graphisoft ArchiCad) generates the Building Information Model (BIM) in the Industry Foundation Class (IFC) format. IFCs are processed by a parsing tool, which translates IFC files into a comprehensible data model. The proposed framework initially examines the asset-based elements and calculates as-designed energy consumption by extracting information from the produced data model. Based on conducted calculations, the proposed schema identifies mandatory renovation actions and generates scenarios for a variety of examined categories. The final output consists of a renovation roadmap that prioritises changes with the greatest impact based on the demand of the building’s stakeholders. The proposed methodology provides a promising approach to help building owners and stakeholders with the identification and prioritisation of energy-saving retrofitting actions, thus contributing to the achievement of energy efficiency goals.
Papers presented at the 14th International Conference on Urban Regeneration and Sustainability address the multidisciplinary components of urban planning, the challenges presented by the increasing ...size of cities, the number of resources required and the complexity of modern society.
Recycling of spent lithium-ion batteries was an important step for the utilization of waste electric and electronic equipment. Commonly studies mainly focused on metal extraction while bringing the ...waste of chemical reagents, secondary pollution, and energy consumption. The reasons for the failure of lithium-ion batteries were the pore blocking by organics and the structural collapse in LiCoO2 crystal. Ultrasonic hydrothermal renovation was a promising method to directly renovate spent LiCoO2 crystal structure and remove the organics. It combined the advantages of ultrasonic and hydrothermal technologies which were high-efficiency and clean production. Ultrasonic cavitation generated by high-powered ultrasonic in liquid phase was a process with bubble formation and implosion. Under the effect of ultrasonic cavitation and advanced oxidation synergistically, the blocked channels and layer structure were effectively rebuilt, the organics were removed and the crystal structure of LiCoO2 was renovated. This experimental result showed that the optimal renovation condition was at the ultrasonic power of 1050 W, the reaction temperature of 90 ℃, the reaction time of 6 h, 1 mL of H2O2, and 0.5 MPa of Ar gas content. The renovated LiCoO2 exhibited good electrochemical properties, the first charge and discharge capacity of 132.1mAh•g − 1 and 131.0mAh•g − 1, and the first cycle efficiency arrived at 99.16%. Additionally, an environmentally friendly and efficient route for the recycling of spent lithium-ion batteries was developed.
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The European Commission has recently adopted the Renovation Wave Strategy, aiming at the improvement of the energy performance of buildings. The strategy aims to at least double renovation rates in ...the next ten years and make sure that renovations lead to higher energy and resource efficiency. The choice of appropriate thermal insulation materials is one of the simplest and, at the same time, the most popular strategies that effectively reduce the energy demand of buildings. Today, the spectrum of insulation materials is quite wide, and each material has its own specific characteristics. It is recognized that the selection of materials is one of the most challenging and difficult steps of a building project. This paper aims to give an in-depth view of existing multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) applications for the selection of insulation materials and to provide major insights in order to simplify the process of methods and criteria selection for future research. A systematic literature review is performed based on the Search, Appraisal, Synthesis and Analysis (SALSA) framework and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement. In order to determine which MCDM method is the most appropriate for different questions, the main advantages and disadvantages of different methods are provided.
•A methodology for identifying cost-effective solutions for districts is presented.•The usefulness of the methodology is shown in a Case study located in Portugal.•All the analysed centralised ...approaches are cost-effective.•A carbon emissions neutral district can be achieved maintaining cost-effectiveness.
Building renovation plays a key role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and achieving the climate protection goals. The district scale approach is one of the most effective approaches to accelerate this process of reducing the energy consumption in the building sector as increasing its renovation rates. In this context, the Energy in Buildings and Communities Programme of the IEA, IEA-EBC started in 2017 the project “Annex 75: Cost-Effective Building renovation at District Level Combining Energy Efficiency and Renewables” aiming to explore optimal opportunities of district renovations from a cost-benefit perspective. IEA Annex 75 is a co-operative effort of participants from 13 different countries: Austria, Belgium, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. In this paper, key elements of the methodology developed in Annex 75 project are presented. This methodology aims to facilitate the identification of optimal solutions in different European countries, enabling to explore similarities and differences amongst them, with a particular focus on the balance between energy efficiency measures and renewable energy measures. After a detailed description of the developed methodology, it is also applied to a case study located in Portugal and results obtained are analysed in detail. The paper demonstrates the usefulness of the methodology for evaluating and identifying optimal solutions in renovations at district scale, as well as for successfully addressing the research questions investigated by the Annex 75 project. They also provide some insights regarding the specific case study, showing that, although district systems are not usual in the current Portuguese context, these centralised solutions in renovations at district level are cost-effective interventions that can lead to significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions and non-renewable primary energy use.
Abstract
In the context of the Renovation Wave, clustered renovations might be a potential approach to increase the renovation rate. In this paper a new methodology is presented to cluster buildings ...based on their renovation potential in view of grouped renovation actions. These clusters are defined at city scale. In this study the city of Leuven (Belgium) was used as a case study. The criteria to develop the clusters of buildings include both building parameters and occupant profiles in order to estimate both the renovation potential of the building as the willingness of the building owner. The resulting clusters of buildings are evaluated by assessing the willingness of the building owners and the profitability, scalability and feasibility of the buildings within the defined clusters. The methodology proposed can be used to support local authorities in identifying the renovation potential and opportunities for group actions to renovate their building stock.
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