Transforming the Norwegian Dwelling Stock to Reach the 2 Degrees Celsius Climate Target

Abstract

ABSTRACT:Residential buildings account for about one third of the final energy demand in Norway. Many costeffective measures for reducing heat losses in buildings are known and their gradual implementation may make the building sector one of the largest contributors to climate change mitigation.To estimate the sectoral reduction potential we model a complete transformation of the dwelling stock by 2050 by both renovation and re-construction with different energy standards. We propose a new dynamic stock model with an optimization routine to identify and prioritize buildings with the highest energy saving potential. The sectoral boundary is extended by including the energy and carbon footprint of the construction industry. 3Despite an expected population growth of almost 50% between 2000 and 2050, sectoral carbon emissions may drop between 30 and 40% compared to emissions in 2000 for scenarios where the stock is completely transformed by either re-construction or ambitious renovation. Due to the lower upstream impact, renovation to passive house standard allows sectoral emissions to decline faster and is therefore preferable from the viewpoint of carbon emissions.Transformation however, is not sufficient to achieve emission reduction of 50% or more as required on average to limit global warming to 2°C, because hot water generation, appliances, and lighting will dominate the sectoral footprint once the stock has been transformed. A first estimate on the impact of energy efficiency and lifestyle changes in the non-heating part of the sector reveals a maximal reduction potential of ca. 75%.

Material Services with Both Eyes Wide Open

“…Various papers within the sustainability discourse define "material services" relative to mass terms and the final product stage [9,82,88,103]. As far as we are aware, no one has ventured into "end user service" which would require functional units of, say passenger-km in transport, m 3 of hot water at 60 • C for heating and hygiene, and GBs of data storage for IT and communications.…”

Double-Skin Façades for the Sustainable Refurbishment of Non-domestic Buildings: A Life Cycle Environmental Impact Perspective

“…Those standards have recently been used to develop tools to evaluate the embodied carbon and energy of buildings (Moncaster and Symons, 2013). These tools echo the focus on GWP as the assessment method when analysing impacts of buildings and their components from a life cycle perspective (Ardente et al, 2011, Hammond and Jones, 2008, Pauliuk et al, 2013. The emphasis on the use of GWP as a method to assess GHG emissions has been described as a crude approach but also beneficial to ease understanding and enhance transparency (Weidema et al, 2008).…”

From Theory to Practice: Enhancing the Potential Policy Impact of Industrial Ecology

“…Numerous studies have appeared within IE highlighting the utility of its tools for emissions management [86][87][88][89][90][91]. Linder and Guan [90], for example, use a hybrid IO-LIA to calculate the embodied energy and life cycle emissions for goods consumed in China.…”

“…The hybrid approach is considered to better represent emissions at the scale of an economy, as opposed to e.g., a product, and therefore should provide information more directly relevant to policymakers. Similarly, Pauliuk et al [88] combine techniques from MFA and LCA in order to take account of indirect emissions from households in their study of residential emissions and energy usage in Norway. Related to the interest in GHG emissions is research into biomass (including bio-waste) as a fuel.…”