Co-benefits of energy related building renovation: demonstration of their impact on the assessment of energy related building renovation (Annex 56)

Abstract

The renovation of the existing building stock represents a huge potential in actions to mitigate climate change, not only by the improvement of the overall energy performance of the built environment, but also by the reduction of resource depletion and minimization of waste production related with new construction. Nevertheless, this potential hasn?t been fully explored. Contributing to this, the evaluation of building renovation measures normally considers only the energy savings and the costs, disregarding other relevant benefits and thus, significantly underestimating the full value of improvement and re-use of buildings at several levels of the economy. In IEA EBC Annex 56 project, the reduction of energy use, emissions and global costs are the direct benefits resulting from energy related renovation measures and the notion of co benefits refers to all the other positive or negative effects resulting from those renovation measures.