Mitigating Climate Change in the Cultural Built Heritage Sector

Abstract

Climate change mitigation targets have put pressure to reduce the carbon footprint of cultural heritage buildings. Commonly adopted measures to decrease the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of historical buildings are targeted at improving their energy efficiency through insulating the building envelope, and upgrading their heating, cooling and lighting systems. However, there are complex issues that arise when mitigating climate change in the cultural built heritage sector. For instance, preserving the authenticity of heritage buildings, maintaining their traditional passive behaviours, and choosing adaptive solutions compatible with the characteristics of heritage materials to avoid an acceleration of decay processes. It is thus important to understand what the enablers, or the barriers, are to reduce the carbon footprint of cultural heritage buildings to meet climate change mitigation targets. This paper investigates how climate change mitigation is considered in the management and preservation of the built heritage through semi-structured interviews with cultural heritage experts from the UK, Italy and Norway. Best-practice approaches for the refurbishment of historical buildings with the aim of decreasing their energy consumption are presented, as perceived by the interviewees, as well as the identification of the enablers and barriers in mitigating climate change in the cultural built heritage sector. The findings emphasise that adapting the cultural built heritage to reduce GHG emissions is challenging, but possible if strong and concerted action involving research and government can be undertaken to overcome the barriers identified in this paper.

A European-Scale Investigation of Soil Erosion Threat to Subsurface Archaeological Remains

“…Several scientific studies evidence the various hazards threatening European cultural heritage, such as earthquakes [37][38][39][40][41], fires [42][43][44], soil erosion [45,46], landslides [47], floods [48], and urbanisation [49,50]. A special mention and growing interest regarding climate change and its impact on cultural heritage is reflected in recent literature [51,52].…”

What Are the Implications of Climate Change for Retrofitted Historic Buildings? A Literature Review

“…Most studies investigate how historic buildings could play their role in climate change mitigation instead of the impacts of climate change on their energy performance. Retrofit action is justified in a climate mitigation perspective [41], the enablers and barriers for the historic building to mitigate climate change are discussed [18,42], as well as the energy and GHG emission saving potential (Section 3.2).…”

“…In the renovation building stock, the share of buildings renovated to nearly zero energy building standard was 17.5% in 2016 [17]. One of the barriers to climate change mitigation in the built heritage sector is the compatibility of retrofit solutions with the historic fabric [18]. Retrofit interventions can change the building's performance substantially, from indoor climate to the envelope's moisture dynamics [19,20].…”

Evaluation of the Impacts of Climate Change on Sediment Yield from the Logiya Watershed, Lower Awash Basin, Ethiopia

“…It is also estimated that the mean annual global air temperature induced by GHG emissions will likely increase by 1.4-2.0 • C by the end of the 21st century [10]. The rising GHG concentration due to continued gas emissions from different sources to the atmosphere affects climate variables and consequently alters hydrological cycles [10,[12][13][14][15]. The change in climate-mainly due to precipitation and temperature patterns-could significantly influence soil erosion rates, streamflow, and sediment yield, which (directly or indirectly) adversely affects water resource availability and ecosystems [13,[16][17][18][19].…”