•The Italian pilot action in the IEE-EPISCOPE project is presented.•Housing stock energy refurbishment scenarios are analysed for Piedmont region (IT).•A bottom-up model using the building typology ...approach is applied.•The current refurbishment trend cannot achieve the climate protection targets.•The average annual rate of refurbished floor area to meet the targets is identified.
The article illustrates the Italian pilot action in the IEE-EPISCOPE project, focussing on the analysis of energy refurbishment trends of the Piedmont region residential building stock.
The methodology follows three steps: (1) definition of a knowledge-base on the current state of the building stock, (2) investigation of refurbishment scenarios considering energy efficiency measures and retrofit rates, and (3) comparison of the achievable CO2 reductions with the climate protection targets in short and middle term. The results are addressed to local authorities to enable them to set up corrective actions to achieve the targets.
Three realistic scenarios are investigated. The first one considers the annual current refurbishment trend and the most common energy efficiency measures. The second scenario applies the measures resulting from a cost-optimal analysis. The third scenario considers the mean annual refurbished floor area necessary to meet the climate protection targets. The results of the scenario analyses emphasise the need of implementing major refurbishments, rather than fixing stricter requirements.
The building stock energy performance is assessed through the building typology approach defined in the IEE-TABULA project. It allows the models of building stock energy refurbishment to be presented in an effective way, easily understandable and manageable by non-energy experts.
•The main differences are the extent of the refurbishment and the system boundaries.•The reference of the expected service life needs to be established to facilitate comparison.•Process Analysis is ...the most used LCI method, instead of Input–Output or Hybrid.•Most refurbishment LCAs focus on building energy retrofits: increasing insulation.•The environmental impacts of structure or finishing reparations were not studied.
This review organises and summarises the recent contributions related to the environmental evaluation of building refurbishment and renovation using the lifecycle assessment (LCA) methodology. This paper classifies the recent contributions in this field and selects the primary methodology options. The review shows that most LCAs focus on energy refurbishment, comparing the environmental impacts before and after refurbishment. In contrast, almost none of the LCAs study the environmental impact of building system reparations, such as structure or finishing. The more frequently studied life cycle stages are those related to the manufacturing and use phases. Similarly, the most considered impact categories are the global warming potential and embodied energy. The main barriers found for disseminations are discussed: system boundaries interpretation of EN 15978, functional unit, LCI methods, operational stage and the end-of-life stage definition.
The European residential building stock is largely composed of buildings with poor energy performance, therefore basic retrofit actions could lead to significant energy savings. However, energy ...refurbishment measures should be identified in accurate way, taking into account the technical viability and aiming both to increase the building energy performance and to restrain the costs.
The present article investigates the effects of different measures applied to the Italian residential building stock by using the building typology, which consists of 120 building types, representative of six construction ages, four building sizes and five climatic zones. A quasi-steady state model has been used to calculate the energy performance; the economic evaluation has been carried out as specified in the EU cost-optimal comparative methodology (Directive 2010/31/EU). The most effective measures and packages of measures, in terms of energy saving and global cost reduction, are identified and discussed.
The results are addressed to important purposes for energy policy, as for instance: (a) to provide political authorities with the most effective energy efficiency measures as to encourage retrofit processes through the allocation of financial incentives, (b) to offer a knowledge-base for developing energy refurbishment scenarios of residential building stocks and forecasting future energy resource demand.
•Investigation of energy savings and cost effectiveness of the Italian housing stock refurbishments.•Application of the building typology approach of the IEE-TABULA project.•Knowledge-base for bottom-up models of the building stock energy performance.•Supporting the political authorities to promote effective refurbishment measures.
Buildings account for almost half of energy consumptions in European countries and energy demand in building continues to grow worldwide. Fossil fuels are finite reserves. Impacts of peak oil will be ...perceived soon or later in the next decades. The scale of the challenge in reducing fossil fuel dependency in the built environment is vast and will require a dramatic increase in skills and awareness amongst the construction professions. Building refurbishment towards zero carbon is established itself as one critical aspect to decouple from fossil fuels and tackle with future energy crisis. However, it is a very complex phenomenon cuts across disciplines. This paper categorises a range of technologies for building refurbishment in a sequential manner. A hierarchical process with embedded techniques (insulations, energy efficient equipment and micro-generation) is presented in this paper as a pathway towards zero-carbon building refurbishment.
Photovoltaic (PV) waste, associated to the exponentially growing PV installations on global scale, presents today an emerging environmental challenge but also brings unprecedented and multifold value ...creation opportunities. In this context, significant PV business and research and development (R&D) efforts shift towards establishing a more sustainable, environmentally friendly and economically viable end‐of‐life (EoL) management for PV modules: including recycling, recovery of raw materials, repair/refurbishment and even re‐use of decommissioned or failed PV modules. In the CIRCUSOL project, PV partners aspire to formalize the repair/refurbish and re‐use value chains in the PV industry and propose a circular business model, based on a product‐service system (PSS). Towards these goals, this review study introduces the relevant research groundwork, a status overview and today's R&D and business challenges in PV recycling, repair/refurbishment and re‐certification aspects for second‐life PV modules. The topics and the relevant reported literature are examined from both circular economy and technology perspective. The review indicates a considerable technological and operational know‐how in PV EoL management that already exists and continuously evolves in mature PV markets. On the other hand, R&D in repair/refurbishment of decommissioned and/or failed PV modules remains scarce, and best practices and commercial services for reliability testing/re‐certification and trading of second‐life PV modules are neither standardized nor consolidated into any PSS or business model.
The current technology status, best practices, and research/pilot efforts in PV recycling are reviewed and discussed, in both technical/technological terms and from a circular economy perspective. The technical/business landscape and best practices in PV repair/refurbishment, as well as in qualification testing for second‐life PV, are reviewed and examined, in both technical and circular economy terms. Next and beyond this review, the technical challenges and innovation opportunities towards second‐life PV business are also outlined. As such, the additional value creation opportunities stemming from PV re‐use (second‐life) or recycling are identified.
The fixed LIDAR system at University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) in Durban was installed in 1999 and operated until 2004. In 2004, the system was relocated and operation closed due to various technical ...and instrument problems. The restructuring of the LIDAR system was initiated in 2013 and it is now used to measure vertical aerosol profiles in the height range 03-25 km. Here, we describe the present system in detail, including technical specifications and results obtained from a recent LIDAR calibration campaign.
The use of the laser scanning technique has increased rapidly in the field of built environment, mainly because it produces highly accurate as-built data. However, the full potential of this ...technique is utilised only limitedly in building refurbishment projects. This research aims to investigate the barriers to the implementation of laser scanning in building refurbishment projects in Finland. Qualitative interviews were carried out to identify these barriers, and furthermore, to explore the current usage of the technique in building refurbishments. The study shows that many obstacles to implementations are related to challenges in laser scanning procurement, including a low level of competence in acquisition, limitations of the laser scanning technique in building refurbishments, and limitations and challenges in utilising the data in design work. This study is beneficial for building owners and practitioners as it presents the challenges and advantages that laser scanning can provide a refurbishment project. In addition, it offers suggestions to improve the early phase of a refurbishment project in order to achieve greater benefits with laser scanning. Furthermore, the findings may be utilised in the procurement process of laser scanning services in such projects, and the results may potentially solve practical challenges encountered in laser scanning work.
Abstract
Reducing economic risk is a constant concern of companies to survive in the market. In this study, the economic risk was analyzed through the prism of two possible variants: the level of the ...physical volume of the production or the refurbishment. It was found that it can be reduced in both situations due to the existence of several production options and that economic risk is directly related to operating profit when the change is made only by increasing the quantity of the first product and decreasing the second product. In the case of refurbishment, the connection is reversed, respectively, when the operating profit decreases, the coefficient of the operational leverage increases. The 25% increase in sales revenues produces more favorable effects in the case of refurbishment.
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•We assess several refurbishment scenarios that meet plus energy standards.•Based on an LCA, the optimum refurbishment includes a high-quality prefabricated façade element.•The ...robustness analysis includes future climate change and a shift to a renewable energy mix.•The energetic payback time is between two and ten years.
Buildings account for 40% of total global energy consumption. The International Energy Agency (IEA) and the European Commission (EC) are attempting to achieve an 80% reduction in global emissions by 2050. The objectives of this paper are to identify the refurbishment scenario with the lowest environmental impact using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and to assess the scenario’s robustness to future climate change scenarios using a sensitivity analysis. We applied and verified the proposed approach in a residential case study of a reference project located in Kapfernberg, Austria. The environmental assessment included two façade refurbishment proposals (minimum and high quality with respect to energy), onsite energy generation (using solar thermal collectors and photovoltaic (PV) panels), one renewable future energy mix and the effects of climate change according to the Austrian Panel on Climate Change (APCC). The environmental indicators used in the assessment were the cumulative energy demand non-renewable (CED n. ren.), global warming potential (GWP) and ecological scarcity (UBP) over building life cycles. The results indicated that a high-quality refurbishment of the thermal envelope with prefabricated façade elements, including solar thermal collectors and PV panels, represented the optimal refurbishment. In terms of the environmental indicators, the high-quality refurbishment scenario is always beneficial throughout the building’s life cycle. Additionally, the sensitivity analysis of the high-quality refurbishment scenario found an increasing production of surplus electricity with increasing PV area. This surplus of energy provides greater benefit in the short term with the current energy mix. Once the energy from the grid is shifted to renewable sources, the added benefit is decreased. Therefore, it is necessary to find an optimal balance between diminishing returns due to changes in the future energy mix and the financial investment made over the lifetime of the building, especially for plus energy buildings. However the findings from this specific case study need to be evaluated for other refurbishment cases, taking into account future local climate change and energy supply mix scenarios in other regions.
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