Building renovation in the EU: scenarios and impact assessment

This report aims to provide scientific support to building renovation policies in the EU by promoting a holistic point of view. As part of the pilot project ‘Integrated techniques for the seismic strengthening and energy efficiency of existing buildings’, renovation scenarios are defined, and their impact is investigated considering seismic and energy efficiency upgrading of residential buildings, independently and in an integrated way. An integrated analysis framework, proposed earlier to identify priority regions across the EU, is extended here to investigate the impact of renovation scenarios. A series of impact metrics are introduced to investigate the renovation potential of regions (capacity of individual building classes within a region to yield benefit), and the impact of renovation scenarios (benefit in absolute terms) across the EU with a focus on priority regions. Impact metrics include benefit-to-cost ratios along with the reduction in economic loss, loss of life, and space heating energy consumption. Three strategies are followed to define renovation scenarios: i) renovating predefined macro-taxonomy classes, ii) renovating predefined fractions of the building stock, iii) renovating building classes so that renovation is economically beneficial. Results clearly illustrate that integrated renovation is capable of tackling the multi-dimensional problem of building renovation, providing a risk-proofed, sustainable, and inclusive building environment.