Identification of environmental and financial cost efficient heating and ventilation services for a typical residential building in Belgium

Assisted by designers and contractors, dwelling owners have historically based their decisions (including the choice of building services) on investment costs. Given the increasing interest in the environmental dimension of the built environment, it is also important to include environmental impact in the decisionmaking process. This paper focuses on the life cycle environmental impact and financial costs of heating and ventilation alternatives for new dwellings in Belgium. Insight into the environmental impact and financial costs of correctly dimensioned configurations over the entire life cycle could enable better choices. Commonly used alternatives are considered, as well as more advanced ones. These are compared and the optima are determined, identifying the best choice within a limited budget. The analysis indicates that, in addition to energy-efficiency measures regarding the building skin, a well-designed heating and ventilation system plays an important role in reducing financial costs and environmental impact over the lifespan of a dwelling. Different heating and ventilation solutions are likely to be selected when initial and life cycle costs are juxtaposed with environmental, financial and total costs. Nevertheless, preferences based on total costs generally coincide with those based on financial costs.publisher: Elsevier articletitle: Identification of environmental and financial cost efficient heating and ventilation services for a typical residential building in Belgium journaltitle: Journal of Cleaner Production articlelink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.05.037 content_type: article copyright: Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.status: publishe

Strategies to Improve the Energy Performance of Buildings: A Review of Their Life Cycle Impact

© 2018 by the authors. Globally, the building sector is responsible for more than 40% of energy use and it contributes approximately 30% of the global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. This high contribution stimulates research and policies to reduce the operational energy use and related GHG emissions of buildings. However, the environmental impacts of buildings can extend wide beyond the operational phase, and the portion of impacts related to the embodied energy of the building becomes relatively more important in low energy buildings. Therefore, the goal of the research is gaining insights into the environmental impacts of various building strategies for energy efficiency requirements compared to the life cycle environmental impacts of the whole building. The goal is to detect and investigate existing trade-offs in current approaches and solutions proposed by the research community. A literature review is driven by six fundamental and specific research questions (RQs), and performed based on two main tasks: (i) selection of literature studies, and (ii) critical analysis of the selected studies in line with the RQs. A final sample of 59 papers and 178 case studies has been collected, and key criteria are systematically analysed in a matrix. The study reveals that the high heterogeneity of the case studies makes it difficult to compare these in a straightforward way, but it allows to provide an overview of current methodological challenges and research gaps. Furthermore, the most complete studies provide valuable insights in the environmental benefits of the identified energy performance strategies over the building life cycle, but also shows the risk of burden shifting if only operational energy use is focused on, or when a limited number of environmental impact categories are assessed.status: publishe

Strategies to Improve the Energy Performance of Buildings: A Review of Their Life Cycle Impact

Globally, the building sector is responsible for more than 40% of energy use and it contributes approximately 30% of the global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. This high contribution stimulates research and policies to reduce the operational energy use and related GHG emissions of buildings. However, the environmental impacts of buildings can extend wide beyond the operational phase, and the portion of impacts related to the embodied energy of the building becomes relatively more important in low energy buildings. Therefore, the goal of the research is gaining insights into the environmental impacts of various building strategies for energy efficiency requirements compared to the life cycle environmental impacts of the whole building. The goal is to detect and investigate existing trade-offs in current approaches and solutions proposed by the research community. A literature review is driven by six fundamental and specific research questions (RQs), and performed based on two main tasks: (i) selection of literature studies, and (ii) critical analysis of the selected studies in line with the RQs. A final sample of 59 papers and 178 case studies has been collected, and key criteria are systematically analysed in a matrix. The study reveals that the high heterogeneity of the case studies makes it difficult to compare these in a straightforward way, but it allows to provide an overview of current methodological challenges and research gaps. Furthermore, the most complete studies provide valuable insights in the environmental benefits of the identified energy performance strategies over the building life cycle, but also shows the risk of burden shifting if only operational energy use is focused on, or when a limited number of environmental impact categories are assessed

Striving for a more sustainable Belgian dwelling stock

A four-year project (SuFiQuaD) has started in 2007 to optimize the Belgian dwelling stock. The optimization focuses on environmental impacts, financial cost and quality aspects. The aim is to evaluate the whole life cycle of representative housing types and formulate recommendations for improvement. In a first phase the methodology has been developed and is now being applied to a limited selection of extreme dwelling types. Based on this application, the methodology will be revised and applied to representative dwelling types. This paper elaborates on the developed methodology and the first results of the implementation. The basic approach for the optimisation is to search for the highest marginal quality improvement for the additional cost. The cost consists of different aspects: initial financial cost, initial environmental cost, life cycle financial cost and life cycle environmental cost. The environmental cost is calculated by translating the environmental impact - estimated based on life cycle assessment - into financial terms. Finally, a quality evaluation is included. This is considered as an essential part of the analysis since a good quality is a requirement for sustainability but moreover, the inclusion of the evaluation of the performance of a building enables comparative analysis.status: publishe

An integrated approach for financial and environmental cost optimisation of heating services - Recommendations for a Belgian dwelling case

A four-year project has started in 2007 to develop a methodology that can be applied to optimize the Belgian dwelling stock. The aim of the project is to optimise buildings concerning their environmental impact, their financial cost and the quality they offer over the whole life cycle, from the production of primary raw materials to the final demolition and end-of-life treatment. In the first phase of the project the optimisation methodology is developed; i.e. environmental impacts are analysed by means of life cycle assessment (LCA); financial costs are calculated based on life cycle cost analyses (LCC); and the quality evaluation is based on multi-criteria analyses (MCA). The aim of the optimization is to realize the highest marginal quality improvement for the additional financial and environmental cost. In a second phase the developed methodology is translated into a work instrument and applied to different dwelling types. This paper goes more deeply into the role heating services play in the environmental and financial costs. For a typical Belgian dwelling initial and life cycle costs for commonly used as well as advanced heating configurations are compared. Since energy consumption for heating is dependent of the way the building envelope is built, the analysis is performed on two dwelling configurations with a different insulation level.status: publishe

Towards 0-impact buildings: a case-study based analysis

To efficiently evolve towards 0-impact buildings it is important to investigate which are the actions in order of priority. The latter can be defined as measures which lead to the highest reduction of the impact for the smallest increase in cost. This paper elaborates on the reduction potential of different environmental impacts of buildings throughout their life cycle based on a set of case studies. The case studies concern typical dwellings in the Belgian context. A life cycle assessment is used for the evaluation of the impacts, while a life cycle cost analysis is applied to determine the financial cost. The impacts are translated into a single score expressed in monetary values. This should be interpreted as an external cost which is not accounted for to date.no ISBNstatus: publishe