The paper draws from the general literature on energy efficiency and historic buildings to explain the importance and potential of user-driven energy efficiency in historic buildings. It is the first review that places the user as a central object of study in the research field of historic buildings and energy Highlights:• State of the art review on user-driven energy efficiency in historic buildings.• Non-intrusive energy efficiency measures have significant impact and potential.• Integrated bottom-up refurbishment processes will provide for better management.
Refurbishment policies for the historic segment of the building stock must be carefully promoted in the process of addressing the transition to a low-emission society to avoid the loss of the values which make this heritage significant. This article presents and the results of a Norwegian life cycle assessment comparing the net climate benefits from the refurbishment of a residential building from the 1930s with the construction of a new building in accordance with modern building codes. The results show that a careful refurbishment of the historic building is favourable in a climate change mitigation perspective over a 60-year period of analysis. For the new building, it takes more than 50 years for the initial emissions from construction to be outweighed by the effects of lower in-use energy consumption. The results underline the significance of emissions from the use of materials in the refurbishment process and that residents play a critical part with respect to realising the expected energy savings. It is concluded that material use and user behaviour have a crucial impact on greenhouse gas emissions in a life cycle perspective and that the continued use of historic buildings should be advocated for in building codes and environmental policies.
This article presents and discusses the challenges of refurbishing historic apartment buildings by correlating findings from research projects LEAF and CulClim. Our aim is to shed light on how residents can partake in and optimise the refurbishment process after energy performance certificates (EPC) have been conducted. The background is that historic apartment buildings are generally more complex than single family buildings with respect to the energy efficiency process as they often have multiple owners with different priorities. The case studies from Norway and Sweden have conceptually contrasting energy performance certificate (EPC) systems. Identified advantages and shortcomings concerning both systems are discussed. In Sweden, the restrained recommendation of measures can lead to national mitigation targets not being realised. In Norway, excessive and unqualified recommendations risk reducing the cultural heritage values of the existing building stock as well as having a negative environmental impact on greenhouse gas emissions. A bottom-up approach incorporating the resident's objectives is presented and discussed. Results suggest that improved EPC-systems and a broadened procedural approach to decision making will ease the process and improve the outcome of the refurbishment with respect to both energy and heritage aspects.
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