GIS-based Life Cycle Assessment of urban building stocks retrofitting- a bottom-up framework applied to Luxembourg (original) (raw)
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Explorative life-cycle assessment of renovating existing urban housing- stocks
Building and Environment, 2019
Urban building-stocks are responsible for a significant share of resource and energy use. To quantify the potential for reducing energy and environmental impact, building-stock modelling (BSM) is commonly used. Recently, the focus of BSM has expanded to include environmental impacts and life-cycle assessment (LCA). However, impact categories are often limited to climate change and representative buildings are often used. In addition, the future state of the stock is often calculated as a step-change to highlight the technical potential of an ideal future state. The aim of this paper is to assess the environmental impact of the future development of an urban housing-stock under business-as-usual scenarios using a building-specific GIS based model applied to the multi-family building stock of the City of Gothenburg. This paper uses an explorative LCA to account for environmental impacts based on dynamic uptake of common renovation measures and resulting energy savings until 2050. Two main scenarios are used where the renovation logic is based on either end-of-life of components or cost-effectiveness and further divided using limiting factors regarding investment capacity and annual share of the stock to be renovated. Results show possible energy savings of up to 23% and a corresponding 31% reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions. Greenhouse-gas emissions avoided due to reduced energy demand are offset by up to 65% by accounting for material use due to construction related renovation measures. For scenarios that favour construction related interventions, PV panels are responsible for the major part of the environmental impact across the 15 mid-point indicators used.
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews
Reducing the energy consumption of buildings is a priority for carbon emissions mitigation in urban areas. Building stock energy models have been developed to support decisions of public authorities in renovation strategies. However, the burdens of renovation interventions and their temporal distribution are mostly overlooked, leading to potential overestimation of environmental benefits. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) provides a holistic estimation of environmental impacts, but further developments are needed to correctly consider spatio-temporal aspects. We propose a spatio-temporal LCA framework to assess renovation scenarios of urban housing stocks, integrating: 1) a geospatial building-by-building stock model, 2) energy demand modelling, 3) product-based LCA, and 4) a scenario generator. Temporal aspects are considered both in the lifecycle inventory and the lifecycle impact assessment phases, by accounting for the evolution of the existing housing stock and applying time-adjusted carbon footprint calculation. We apply the framework for the carbon footprint assessment of housing renovation in Esch-sur-Alzette (Luxembourg). Results show that the renovation stage represents 4% to 16% of the carbon footprint in the residual service life of existing buildings, respectively after conventional or advanced renovations. Under current renovation rates, the carbon footprint reduction would be limited to 3-4% by 2030. Pushing renovation rates to 3%, enables carbon reductions up to 28% by 2030 when combined with advanced renovations. Carbon reductions in the operational stage of buildings are offset by 8-9% due to the impacts of renovation. Using time-adjusted emissions, results in higher weight for the renovation stage and slightly lower benefits for renovation.
A methodology for spatial modelling of energy and resource use of buildings in urbanized areas
2014
This paper presents and discusses a methodology for modelling energy and resource use of urban building stocks. The methodology integrates and further develops methodologies for energy, carbon and resource use analysis on building stocks with the aim of applying these to a case study of the City of Gothenburg, Sweden. Integrating geographical information systems (GIS) in the methodology for modeling of the building stock, allows assessment of the contribution and effect of various strategies to meet environmental goals for municipalities, portfolio owners, such as housing associations and institutional investors. The methodology identifies different development strategies including various options for refurbishment, add-on and new construction, which are evaluated with respect to their potential environmental impacts related to the life-cycle of the building, including construction and end-of-life options.
A GIS-based statistical approach to prioritize the retrofit of housing stocks at the urban scale
2016
Cities are responsible for about 70% of the overall primary energy consumption in Europe and play a major role in addressing carbon mitigation. In this respect, the housing s ector has been identified as a key sector for its high energy savings potential achievable by implementing retrofit measures. However, a detailed characterization of the housing energy consumption profile and spatial distribution is needed to properly asse ss the energy saving potential at the urban scale and further support sustainable urban planning and energy policies. This study focused on a statistical approach based on Geographical Information Systems (GIS) developed to identify the energy consumption profile of urban housing stocks, the energy savings potential achievable by implementing retrofit measures and their respective spatial distribution across one entire city. The final energy consumption of individual dwellings was predicted by running a mul tiple linear regression model based on measured ener...
Energy and Buildings, 2016
Several building-stock modelling techniques have been employed to investigate the impact of energy efficiency measures (EEM), where the description of the building-stock generally consists of an agetype classification to specify building characteristics for groups of buildings. Such descriptions lack the appropriate level of detail to differentiate the potential for EEM within age groups. This paper proposes a methodology for building-stock description using building-specific data and measured energy use to augment an age-type building-stock classification. By integrating building characteristics from energy performance certificates, measured energy use and envelope areas from a 2.5D GIS model, the buildingstock description reflects the heterogeneity of the building-stock. The proposed method is validated using a local building portfolio (N = 433) in the city of Gothenburg, where modelled results for space heating and domestic hot water are compared to data from measurements, both on an individual building level and for the entire portfolio. Calculated energy use based on the building-stock description of the portfolio differ less than 3% from measured values, with 42% of the individual buildings being within a 20% margin of measured energy use indicating further work is needed to reduce or quantify the uncertainty on a building level.
Energy and Buildings, 2017
In the building sector, the energy and the greenhouse gases embodied in the building materials are becoming increasingly important. Combined with the operational primary energy demand and the endof-life, the whole life cycle of buildings can be assessed. In this paper, a comprehensive method for calculating the life cycle of individual buildings is presented. First, their material composition has been determined and generic values for the embodied energy, embodied greenhouse gases, energy needed and greenhouse gases emitted during disposal of the different building materials have been calculated. Subsequently these values have been integrated into an urban energy simulation software to simulate energy and emission values for buildings. A given building geometry with four different building standards was considered. The results can help to decide between building refurbishment or demolition and new construction. For example it could be shown that the share of the life cycle stage production compared to the total value rises with a better building insulation standard, as the share of the use stage decreases. The highest building refurbishment standard resulted in the best life cycle performance when compared with less ambitious refurbishment or construction of a new building of today's standards.
Assessing Sustainable Retrofit of the old Dwellings Stock in Brussels Capital Region
In the framework of the research project "B³RetroTool", a typology of existing dwellings, built before 1945, has been made, based on a literature review of main steps of the urban and building development of Brussels area. This old part of the Brussels dwellings stock has been chosen because it represents 60% of the dwelling stock but moreover, it gives to Brussels its identity, its architectural and its historical legacy. This contribution presents the methodology to identify typology, to structure a representative database of existing dwellings stock (with spatial distribution in Brussels area) and to define criteria to assess retrofitting strategies for each dwelling type in order to enhance heritage value and to combine it with relevant energy and environmental performances. The originality of this research is to consider energy, environmental and heritage aspects in a noncompartmentalized and complementary way, in order to help designers to reach their objective of a great...
The housing sector has a significant energy savings potential achievable by retrofitting, however overheating might become a drawback in summer especially under the effect of climate change and urban heat island and should be properly considered in sustainable urban plans. This study aims at estimating the combined effect of retrofit measures on heating energy demand and indoor thermal comfort of housing stocks at the urban scale. A bottom-up approach was developed based on Geographical Information Systems, dynamic thermal simulation and indoor thermal comfort analysis. The study provided relevant results for Rotterdam city (Netherlands) to support sustainable urban planning.
Stakeholder Specific Multi-Scale Spatial Representation of Urban Building-Stocks
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information
Urban building-stocks use a significant amount of resources and energy. At the same time, they have a large potential for energy efficiency measures (EEM). To support decision-making and planning, spatial building-stock models are used to examine the current state and future development of urban building-stocks. While these models normally focus on specific cities, generic and broad stakeholder groups such as planners and policy makers are often targeted. Consequently, the visualization and communication of results are not tailored to these stakeholders. The aim of this paper is to explore the possibilities of mapping and representing energy use of urban building-stocks at different levels of aggregation and spatial distributions, to communicate with specific stakeholders involved in the urban development process. This paper uses a differentiated building-stock description based on building-specific data and measured energy use from energy performance certificates for multi-family buildings (MFB) in the city of Gothenburg. The building-stock description treats every building as unique, allowing results to be provided at any level of aggregation to suit the needs of the specific stakeholders involved. Calculated energy use of the existing stock is within 10% of the measured energy use. The potential for EEM in the existing stock is negated by the increased energy use due to new construction until 2035, using a development scenario based on current renovation rates and planned developments. Visualizations of the current energy use of the stock as well as the impact of renovation and new construction are provided, targeting specific local stakeholders.
Development of an urban typology to assess residential environmental performance at the city scale
2011
In this research, a typology of urban blocks is drawn up for the urban area of Liege. This typology of urban blocks is organized into a set of themes according to various environmental parameters. This paper presents the energy part of this typology on the residential building stock of Liege, which includes four topics: residential buildings energy consumption; transport energy consumption of residents; development potentialities of public transport and development potentialities of energy networks. The proposed typology was elaborated through the use of GIS tools combined with a statistical treatment of several specific criteria at the urban block scale. For each class of this typology, a representative block is selected for further energy simulations in order to model residential energy use related to buildings, transport and energy networks at the city scale. The methodology developed in this paper is adapted to urban, suburban and rural zones. It can thus be adapted and/or reproduced on many other territories in Belgium but also in Europe or even further.