Prioritizing deep renovation for housing portfolios

Abstract

Cost-effectiveness of deep renovation has been assessed thoroughly on a building level. Such studies pro- vide limited guidance when prioritizing renovation measures for a building portfolio. On a stock level, building-stock modelling is commonly used to assess impact of renovation on a national and city level, targeting stakeholders operating at a planning or policy level. However, due to methodological choices and data availability, assessment of property owner portfolios is lacking. The aim of this paper is to cal- culate and spatially differentiate cost-effectiveness of deep renovation using equivalent annual cost and increase in assessed building value for a portfolio owner as a first step in prioritizing deep renovation within a building portfolio. A bottom-up engineering-based model is applied utilizing building-specific information for a municipal housing company portfolio in the City of Gothenburg, Sweden, consisting of 1803 multi-family buildings. Energy demand for space heating and hot-water is calibrated using mea- sured energy use from energy performance certificates. Deep renovation is assessed by applying a pack- age of measures across all buildings. Results show average energy use reduction across the portfolio of 51% to an average cost of 597 EUR/m 2 living area. While average energy cost savings account for 21% of equivalent annual cost, there are seven buildings where more than half the annual equivalent cost of renovation is covered by energy cost savings. Similarly, the distribution of change in assessed build- ing value is large for individual buildings, ranging from 0–23%. Aggregating results to larger areas tend to average out results while differences between individual buildings within areas persists. As such, the cost-effectiveness of deep renovation should be assessed on a building-by-building basis rather than for an area or neighbourhood. The results are intended as a first step in prioritizing deep renovation within a building portfolio and further detailed assessment is needed.

Publication
Energy and Buildings
Magnus Österbring
Research and innovation coordinator at NCC
Claudio Nägeli
Co-Founder - Sinom

I have long experience in energy and building related fields from a technical, economic, environmental and system level through my work as an energy consultant and researcher. Through my background I have gained broad knowledge in the field of energy in buildings as well as statistics, data analysis and visualization. I am interested in using data and models to speed up the energy transformation in the built environment.

Holger Wallbaum
Holger Wallbaum
Full Professor, Vice-Head of Department and Vice-Dean for Research

Holger is a Full Professor in sustainable building at the Division of Building Technology, research group Sustainable Building, and in the Area of advance Building Futures. Holger works within sustainable building on concepts, tools and strategies to enhance the sustainability performance of construction materials, building products, buildings as well as entire cities.