IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v10y2017i11p1851-d118573.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Combining Life Cycle Environmental and Economic Assessments in Building Energy Renovation Projects

Author

Listed:
  • Roberta Moschetti

    (Industrial Ecology Programme, Department of Energy and Process Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway)

  • Helge Brattebø

    (Industrial Ecology Programme, Department of Energy and Process Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway)

Abstract

Buildings currently play a fundamental role for the achievement of the sustainable development goals as they are responsible for several environmental, social, and economic impacts. Energy renovation projects of existing buildings can support the reduction of environmental impacts by leading, at the same time, to economic and social advantages. In this paper, the life cycle assessment and life cycle costing methodologies were used in a combined performance assessment applied to a case study, i.e., the energy renovation project of a single-family house in Norway. Several scenarios based on alternative energy efficiency measures were analyzed, and life cycle environmental and economic indicators were computed, i.e., global warming potential (GWP), cumulative energy demand (CED), and net present cost (NPC). The results demonstrated the close to negative linear regression between the environmental and economic indicators computed. However, the values of CED and GWP for the best scenarios in environmental terms were respectively 50% and 32% lower than the values of the worst scenarios, while their NPC was around 6% higher than the lowest values. The findings can be helpful in the decision-making context towards a meaningful combination of environmental and economic assessments in building energy renovation projects for selecting the most sustainable scenario.

Suggested Citation

  • Roberta Moschetti & Helge Brattebø, 2017. "Combining Life Cycle Environmental and Economic Assessments in Building Energy Renovation Projects," Energies, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-17, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:10:y:2017:i:11:p:1851-:d:118573
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/10/11/1851/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/10/11/1851/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bin, Guoshu & Parker, Paul, 2012. "Measuring buildings for sustainability: Comparing the initial and retrofit ecological footprint of a century home – The REEP House," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 24-32.
    2. Mohamad Monkiz Khasreen & Phillip F. G. Banfill & Gillian F. Menzies, 2009. "Life-Cycle Assessment and the Environmental Impact of Buildings: A Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 1(3), pages 1-28, September.
    3. Beccali, Marco & Cellura, Maurizio & Fontana, Mario & Longo, Sonia & Mistretta, Marina, 2013. "Energy retrofit of a single-family house: Life cycle net energy saving and environmental benefits," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 283-293.
    4. Ouyang, Jinlong & Ge, Jian & Hokao, Kazunori, 2009. "Economic analysis of energy-saving renovation measures for urban existing residential buildings in China based on thermal simulation and site investigation," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 140-149, January.
    5. Amstalden, Roger W. & Kost, Michael & Nathani, Carsten & Imboden, Dieter M., 2007. "Economic potential of energy-efficient retrofitting in the Swiss residential building sector: The effects of policy instruments and energy price expectations," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 1819-1829, March.
    6. Xu, Pengpeng & Chan, Edwin Hon-Wan & Qian, Queena Kun, 2011. "Success factors of energy performance contracting (EPC) for sustainable building energy efficiency retrofit (BEER) of hotel buildings in China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(11), pages 7389-7398.
    7. Pisello, Anna Laura & Petrozzi, Alessandro & Castaldo, Veronica Lucia & Cotana, Franco, 2016. "On an innovative integrated technique for energy refurbishment of historical buildings: Thermal-energy, economic and environmental analysis of a case study," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 1313-1322.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Georges Atallah & Faris Tarlochan, 2021. "Comparison between Variable and Constant Refrigerant Flow Air Conditioning Systems in Arid Climate: Life Cycle Cost Analysis and Energy Savings," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(18), pages 1-13, September.
    2. Elena Fregonara & Diego Giuseppe Ferrando & Jean-Marc Tulliani, 2022. "Sustainable Public Procurement in the Building Construction Sector," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(18), pages 1-23, September.
    3. Binju P Raj & Chandan Swaroop Meena & Nehul Agarwal & Lohit Saini & Shabir Hussain Khahro & Umashankar Subramaniam & Aritra Ghosh, 2021. "A Review on Numerical Approach to Achieve Building Energy Efficiency for Energy, Economy and Environment (3E) Benefit," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(15), pages 1-26, July.
    4. Henrik Engelbrecht Foldager & Rasmus Camillus Jeppesen & Muhyiddine Jradi, 2019. "DanRETRO: A Decision-Making Tool for Energy Retrofit Design and Assessment of Danish Buildings," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(14), pages 1-19, July.
    5. Elena Fregonara & Diego Giuseppe Ferrando, 2023. "The Discount Rate in the Evaluation of Project Economic-Environmental Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-18, January.
    6. Cesare Biserni & Paolo Valdiserri & Dario D’Orazio & Massimo Garai, 2018. "Energy Retrofitting Strategies and Economic Assessments: The Case Study of a Residential Complex Using Utility Bills," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(8), pages 1-15, August.
    7. Alaa Khadra & Mårten Hugosson & Jan Akander & Jonn Are Myhren, 2020. "Development of a Weight Factor Method for Sustainability Decisions in Building Renovation. Case Study Using Renobuild," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(17), pages 1-15, September.
    8. Vegard Heide & Håkon Selstad Thingbø & Anne Gunnarshaug Lien & Laurent Georges, 2022. "Economic and Energy Performance of Heating and Ventilation Systems in Deep Retrofitted Norwegian Detached Houses," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(19), pages 1-29, September.
    9. Fabio Fantozzi & Caterina Gargari & Massimo Rovai & Giacomo Salvadori, 2019. "Energy Upgrading of Residential Building Stock: Use of Life Cycle Cost Analysis to Assess Interventions on Social Housing in Italy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(5), pages 1-13, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wang, Xiaotong & Lu, Meijun & Mao, Wei & Ouyang, Jinlong & Zhou, Bo & Yang, Yunkai, 2015. "Improving benefit-cost analysis to overcome financing difficulties in promoting energy-efficient renovation of existing residential buildings in China," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 119-130.
    2. Thibodeau, Charles & Bataille, Alain & Sié, Marion, 2019. "Building rehabilitation life cycle assessment methodology–state of the art," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 408-422.
    3. Li, Jun & Ng, S. Thomas & Skitmore, Martin, 2017. "Review of low-carbon refurbishment solutions for residential buildings with particular reference to multi-story buildings in Hong Kong," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 393-407.
    4. Gireesh Nair & Leo Verde & Thomas Olofsson, 2022. "A Review on Technical Challenges and Possibilities on Energy Efficient Retrofit Measures in Heritage Buildings," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(20), pages 1-20, October.
    5. Hong, Taehoon & Koo, Choongwan & Kim, Hyunjoong & Seon Park, Hyo, 2014. "Decision support model for establishing the optimal energy retrofit strategy for existing multi-family housing complexes," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 157-169.
    6. Zheng, Saina & Lam, Chor-Man & Hsu, Shu-Chien & Ren, Jingzheng, 2018. "Evaluating efficiency of energy conservation measures in energy service companies in China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 580-591.
    7. Koo, Choongwan & Hong, Taehoon & Kim, Jimin & Kim, Hyunjoong, 2015. "An integrated multi-objective optimization model for establishing the low-carbon scenario 2020 to achieve the national carbon emissions reduction target for residential buildings," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 410-425.
    8. Ouyang, Jinlong & Lu, Meijun & Li, Bing & Wang, Chunyuan & Hokao, Kazunori, 2011. "Economic analysis of upgrading aging residential buildings in China based on dynamic energy consumption and energy price in a market economy," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(9), pages 4902-4910, September.
    9. Venkatraj, V. & Dixit, M.K., 2021. "Life cycle embodied energy analysis of higher education buildings: A comparison between different LCI methodologies," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    10. Friege, Jonas & Chappin, Emile, 2014. "Modelling decisions on energy-efficient renovations: A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 196-208.
    11. Khayatian, Fazel & Sarto, Luca & Dall'O', Giuliano, 2017. "Building energy retrofit index for policy making and decision support at regional and national scales," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 1062-1075.
    12. Guariso, Giorgio & Sangiorgio, Matteo, 2019. "Multi-objective planning of building stock renovation," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 101-110.
    13. Jihwan Yeon & Seoki Lee & Phillip M Jolly & Anna S Mattila, 2023. "The impact of environmental management on firm performance in the U.S. lodging REITs: The moderating role of outside board of directors," Tourism Economics, , vol. 29(2), pages 513-532, March.
    14. Qian, Dong & Guo, Ju’e, 2014. "Research on the energy-saving and revenue sharing strategy of ESCOs under the uncertainty of the value of Energy Performance Contracting Projects," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 710-721.
    15. Yao, Jian, 2020. "Uncertainty of building energy performance at spatio-temporal scales: A comparison of aggregated and disaggregated behavior models of solar shade control," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 195(C).
    16. Sierra-Pérez, Jorge & Rodríguez-Soria, Beatriz & Boschmonart-Rives, Jesús & Gabarrell, Xavier, 2018. "Integrated life cycle assessment and thermodynamic simulation of a public building’s envelope renovation: Conventional vs. Passivhaus proposal," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 212(C), pages 1510-1521.
    17. Ouyang, Jinlong & Long, Enshen & Hokao, Kazunori, 2010. "Rebound effect in Chinese household energy efficiency and solution for mitigating it," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 35(12), pages 5269-5276.
    18. Langevin, J. & Reyna, J.L. & Ebrahimigharehbaghi, S. & Sandberg, N. & Fennell, P. & Nägeli, C. & Laverge, J. & Delghust, M. & Mata, É. & Van Hove, M. & Webster, J. & Federico, F. & Jakob, M. & Camaras, 2020. "Developing a common approach for classifying building stock energy models," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    19. Roux, Charlotte & Schalbart, Patrick & Assoumou, Edi & Peuportier, Bruno, 2016. "Integrating climate change and energy mix scenarios in LCA of buildings and districts," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 184(C), pages 619-629.
    20. Joanna Rucińska & Anna Komerska & Jerzy Kwiatkowski, 2020. "Preliminary Study on the GWP Benchmark of Office Buildings in Poland Using the LCA Approach," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(13), pages 1-18, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:10:y:2017:i:11:p:1851-:d:118573. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.