Abstract
Building renovation is a key measure to reduce energy consumption and Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and ease the transition to a fully renewable energy system. This paper applies the IEA EBC Annex 75 methodology for investigating the cost optimal and environmental trade-off between investment in energy efficiency measures on the building envelope and energy supply, on a residential neighbourhood in Norway. Combination of different energy efficiency measures and energy supply systems are investigated with an optimal investment model. The cost and environmental impact of the combinations are evaluated. An important outcome is that within the evaluated combinations, the choice of energy supply system has little impact on the cost effectiveness of the energy efficiency measures. However, it has a significant impact on the GHG emissions. The results also highlight the importance of performing energy efficiency measures in coordination with other renovating measures, both regarding cost effectiveness and environmental impact. The results will not give a finite answer to what is the best solution but serves at a useful set of inputs for overall evaluations.
Highlights
Building renovation is a key measure to reduce energy consumption, and Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, increase resource utilisation, and ease the transition to a fully renewable energy system
This study evaluated different energy efficiency measures on the building envelope in combination with anyway renovations and solutions for the energy supply system for a cooperative housing neighbourhood in Norway
The results from evaluated cases reveals that the choice of energy supply system has little impact on the cost effectiveness of the energy efficiency measures
Summary
Building renovation is a key measure to reduce energy consumption, and GHG emissions, increase resource utilisation, and ease the transition to a fully renewable energy system. Investigating measures at single building level can often result in sub-optimal solutions that are not to the benefit of the overall energy system [3]. The district scale allows to investigate the cost-effective balance between energy efficiency measures and renewable energy sources at a higher level, by including district energy solutions. Working on district or urban scale makes it possible to take advantage of interactions and synergies between different buildings, as well as speeding up the process of reducing energy consumption and associated GHG emissions in the building sector [4]
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