Deep renovation of historic buildings

Abstract

Purpose Improving the energy performance of historic buildings has the potential to reduce carbon emissions while protecting built heritage through its continued use. However, implementing energy retrofits in these buildings faces social, economic, and technical barriers. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to present the approach of IEA-SHC Task 59 to address some of these barriers. Design/methodology/approach Task 59 aims to achieve the lowest possible energy demand for historic buildings. This paper proposes a definition for this concept and identifies three key socio-technical barriers to achieving this goal: the decision-makers’ lack of engagement in the renovation of historic buildings, a lack of support during the design process and limited access to proven retrofit solutions. Two methods – dissemination of best-practice and guidelines – are discussed in this paper as critical approaches for addressing the first two barriers. Findings An assessment of existing databases indicates a lack of best-practice examples focused specifically on historic buildings and the need for tailored information describing these case studies. Similarly, an initial evaluation of guidelines highlighted the need for process-oriented guidance and its evaluation in practice. Originality/value This paper provides a novel definition of lowest possible energy demand for historic buildings that is broadly applicable in both practice and research. Both best-practices and guidelines are intended to be widely disseminated throughout the field.

Reducing carbon from heritage buildings: the importance of residents’ views, values and behaviours

“…24 Resident's views of heritage are context specific and must be understood individually. 25 One study, of a UNESCO World Heritage city (Visby, Sweden), found that residents broadly agreed with the city's official heritage characterisation document, which identifies the importance of retaining original windows, doors and roofs. However, when asked about their own homes as opposed to photos of archetype buildings, residents most valued 'the building in context' instead of specific elements.…”

Retrofitting traditional buildings: a risk-management framework integrating energy and moisture

“…The retrofit of traditional buildings is, therefore, essential. It is one of the UK's five priorities for government action as identified by the Committee on Climate Change (Holmes et al 2019) and the focus of international initiatives such as the International Energy Agency's (IEA) Annex 76/Task 59 programme (Herrera-Avellanosa et al 2019) for the renovation of historic buildings towards zero energy by means of conservation-compatible energy retrofit approaches (Buda et al 2021).…”

Rethinking retrofit of residential heritage buildings

“…National designations identify 1-2% of buildings via the individual 'listed building' system, while many areas and groups of buildings are designated as conservation areas, World Heritage Sites or National Parks (Cadw 2018;Historic England 2019;Historic Environment Scotland 2019). In addition, many undesignated older buildings are acknowledged to have important historic, aesthetic and communal values, which help to shape the character of urban and rural areas (Cadw 2011;Herrera-Avellanosa et al 2019). In all, around 20-30% of UK domestic buildings are likely to have some form of heritage value (Pickles & McCaig 2017).…”

“…There are also a number of technical challenges for retrofitting these buildings. First, their traditional, often regionally specific and generally moisture-permeable construction affects the types of retrofits that may be suitable (Herrera-Avellanosa et al 2019;May & Rye 2012). Second, and as with all buildings, the carbon-reduction potential of retrofits is contingent upon current energy use and therefore on occupant energy behaviours (Ben & Steemers 2014).…”

“…Heritage value is usually seen as that defined by planning designations (Harrestrup & Svendsen 2015;Zagorskas et al 2014), which tend to have been decided in a top-down manner (Eriksson 2018;Tweed & Sutherland 2007). Residents' heritage values meanwhile are often specific to their own individual buildings (Herrera-Avellanosa et al 2019), and rarely receive detailed consideration in either the literature (Lidelöw et al 2019) or planning decisions. However, even in undesignated older buildings, residents' retrofit decisions are strongly influenced by their specific heritage values (Sunikka-Blank & Galvin 2016).…”