Technical and Economic Considerations on Energy Efficiency of Existing Buildings Through Refurbishment

In today’s society sustainable development refers mainly to the efficient use of resources, including energy use in all human activities and the environments where these take place. Currently there is an increased need to make the energy consumption of existing buildings more efficient and the greatest opportunity in this regard is through a refurbishment process. This paper presents an application of a multicriteria optimization model based on a technical and economic analysis of the improvements to be made to buildings with regard to energy consumption and cost saving during the refurbishment process. By utilizing value engineering techniques and a cost-benefit analysis it was identified a set of renovation measures which improve the energy use and then by means of the proposed instrument it was achieved the optimal combination to obtain the maximum energetic benefit within a limited budget. In order to prove the feasibility of the proposed model a case study was conducted on a university building needing refurbishment. The present work aims to develop a specific optimization tool to support the decision maker in the early design stage of a refurbishment project by enhancing the energy efficiency and the sustainability.