Balancing Active and Passive Building Components to achieve Minimal Greenhous Gas Emissions in Refurbishment Projects

Abstract

Some active and passive components make it possible for refurbishment projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). The dilemma is that both require the installation of components, which come with a certain level of embodied GHG emissions. Additionally, the purchased power to operate the building also comes with specific GHG emissions. We developed a method to assess the equivalent annual GHG emissions of different combinations of active and passive components for a building with a heat pump heating combined with a ground source heat exchanger (GSHX). We applied this method to a reference model and determined a combination of insulation thickness and depth of GSHX that provides the lowest total GHG emissions. We found that this combination can considerably deviate from the currently recommended insulation thickness based on regulations regarding energy savings in refurbishment projects. As a consequence, refurbishment projects towards minimal or zero GHG emissions cannot be achieved by a normative approach, but require an assessment as proposed in this study.