Potential for energy savings in Czech residential building stock by application of a prefabricated mass retrofitting system

Abstract

Buildings are responsible for a significant share of EU energy consumption. To improve energy efficiency of the building stock, it is needed to significantly increase renovation rates. To overcome actual barriers related to this problem, such as partial and non-systematic renovations, lasting unrest during renovation or time-consuming wet processes, an industrialized construction system using prefabricated modular elements seems to be a possible way. Such system for mass energy retrofitting of residential buildings in Central Europe was developed in H2020 project MORE-CONNECT. The work presented in this article aimed to roughly estimate potential yearly energy savings by applying this new modular retrofitting system on one typology segment of the Czech residential building stock: non-renovated multifamily residential buildings built between 1946 and 1960 with total gross floor area covering over 7 million square meters. The main objective of the research presented in this paper was to make a hypothetic rough estimation of potential yearly energy savings by applying the new modular retrofitting system on a target typology of the Czech residential building stock. According to the calculations, application of proposed retrofitting system on the chosen building type would reduce the total energy consumption in Czech residential buildings by 2.9 % and by 1.8 % compared to energy consumption in all Czech buildings.