Abstract
When the external measurements of a building are fixed, an increase in external wall thickness caused by additional insulation, for example, will lead to loss of saleable floor area. This issue has to be taken into account in the evaluation of investment profitability. This paper examines how technologies used in energy-efficient residential building construction affect the available saleable floor area and how this impacts profitability of investment. Using a modeled building and an analysis of the average construction cost, we assessed losses and gains of saleable floor area in energy-efficient buildings. The analysis shows that the impact of potential losses or gains of saleable floor area should be taken into account when comparing investment alternatives: building energy-efficient green dwellings or building conventional ones. The results indicate that constructing energy-efficient buildings and introducing very energy-efficient technologies may be energy- and cost-effective even compared with conventional buildings. Employing new products in energy-efficient construction allows benefit to be drawn from lower energy consumption during the life cycle of the building, but also from the increase in saleable floor area.
Highlights
There are ambitious goals in the EU to reduce energy consumption in the building stock and a crucial question is to what extent the investment in energy-efficient technologies is profitable and whether further political measures are necessary.The process of decision-making in simple terms is based on valuing benefits against costs and against alternative solutions
As noted in the literature, one of the greatest barriers to diffusion and commercialization of new environmental technologies is that benefits are spread out over time or not observable directly
It is important to demonstrate that implementing new energy-efficient technologies in the construction of buildings can have a more direct effect, which may positively impact on the profitability of highly energy-efficient buildings in the form of saleable floor area
Summary
There are ambitious goals in the EU to reduce energy consumption in the building stock and a crucial question is to what extent the investment in energy-efficient technologies is profitable and whether further political measures are necessary. Literature brings forward evidence that green buildings transact at 3%–12% higher prices than conventional buildings on the commercial [10,11,12] and the residential market [13,14,15,16,17] This type of data can be used to calculate the profitability of the investment as is done in [9]. In the case of the scenario described above, where the external measurements of a building are fixed or limited, construction of an energy-efficient building has a direct effect on the amount of saleable floor area and on the developer’s potential income from rent or sale. This paper contributes to the discussion on the profitability of energy-efficient solutions in green buildings [9,10,27,28] by investigating the possible impact of introducing more energy-efficient products on the economic attractiveness and profitability of constructing highly energy-efficient buildings
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