Potential economic and energy impacts of substituting adaptive reuse for new building construction: A case study of Ontario

Abstract

Adaptive reuse is an alternative to a building’s end-of-life where its function is extended to serve another purpose. Many studies suggest that adaptive reuse is more sustainable than typical demolition and new construction in terms of environmental, social, and economic impacts. However, these claims are qualitative in nature and are limited to analyses at the project scale. This paper presents a methodology based on Input-Output (IO) models for examining economic and energy impacts of substituting adaptive reuse for new building construction. An IO model for the Province of Ontario, Canada, was developed to study the impacts of adaptive reuse building construction. The building construction industries’ intermediate inputs and final demands were altered in the Ontario IO model to reflect changes in the supply and demand of adaptive reuse buildings in the construction industries. A basic scenario represents the situation where only the building’s superstructure and substructure are reused. The basic scenario was then extended to reflect the reuse of internal non-structural components. The Ontario IO model examines impacts to gross domestic product (GDP), industry outputs, employment and energy use (including rebound effects from household consumption changes). It was found that adaptive reuse building construction may benefit Ontario’s economy and reduce energy consumption under certain combinations of changes in supply and demand. The desired domain of adaptive reuse construction, where energy use decreases, while GDP and employment increases, is discerned for both the residential and non-residential building construction sectors in Ontario. This methodology may be used for other regions for which IO information exists.