Residential building refurbishment: innovative concepts and technologies - OPET Slovakia, Energy Centre Bratislava

Summary
This project focused on the promotion of innovative technologies for building refurbishment. The project activities were based on the initial survey prepared by partner countries, which includes relevant data in the field of the building sector namely: national and energy policy, technical standards related mainly to thermal insulation and heating, energy consumption within the sector, energy saving potential, legislative, financial and technology barriers for implementation of the energy saving measures and ways how to overcome them. All these data were summarized and analysed in the cross-national report, where the overall comparison of the building stock status within the partner countries from the West, as well as from the East and Central Europe were elaborated. Special attention was given to dissemination and evaluation of the project results through seminars, and workshops that were mainly addressed to experts and decision makers. The wider public was also involved through articles published in newspapers, magazines and broadcast session. All the project results were also accessible for free on the OPET Building webpage.

End-user area	New buildings Refurbishment of buildings
Target audience	Architects and engineers Decision makers ESCOs Households Local and regional authorities Property owners
Technical scope	Energy efficiency Heating

Context
In the EU member countries and in the accession countries, the greatest share of final energy is consumed in the residential building sector (over 30%). Most of this energy is used for space and water heating. On the other hand, the residential building stock is characterised by a huge potential and need for major refurbishment, which would lead to significant reduction in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission.

In the accession countries, the refurbishment of residential building stock is an urgent need, especially for apartment buildings. Approximately 50% of the population of accession countries live in these panel buildings with low thermal quality built between the 1950s and 1980s. They are characterised by enormous heat losses and building technologies at the end of their physical life cycle. This means a challenge for new innovative energy efficient technologies in the process of building refurbishment.

Objectives
The objective of WP4 "Innovative concepts and technologies for residential building refurbishment" is the dissemination of best practice refurbishment of residential buildings in order to promote the importance of energy efficiency measures which are easy feasible and leading to energy savings. Within the project, 20 successful case studies were collected and disseminated, mainly focused on apartment building refurbishments with huge energy saving potential. Four of the partners have prepared a draft action plan addressed to decisions-makers, focused on ways to overcome existing barriers related to building refurbishment.

Process

• Preparation of the national reports dealing with the current status of the dwelling stock were elaborated by ten countries namely by: Germany-ZAB, Italy-ENEA, Hungary-BUTE, Lithuania-LEI, Latvia-EKODOMA, Estonia-EERI, Slovenia-ZRMK, Slovakia-ECB, Romania-ENERO, Bulgaria-SEC. Based on delivered National reports, a cross-country report has been developed by the ECB as WP4 leader. This report includes the residential sector overview and comparison concerning: residential sector overview, national & energy policies in residential sector, energy consumption in residential sector, assessment of technical, economic and market energy saving potential, identification of barriers for technology measures and ways to overcome these barriers.
• 20 successful case studies have been delivered, mostly focused on panel buildings refurbishment concerning implemented measures such as thermal insulation, replacement or renovation of building openings, installation of heat control and measuring devices, as well as the energy savings achieved after the refurbishment. Whereas, in the EU, the refurbishment concerns rather older individual apartment houses built in the period from 1900 up to the 19-sixties, the main problem of CEE-countries is the mass build-up of concrete panel apartment houses, in the period from 1960 up to 1989, with a low level of thermal insulation.
• Savings have been achieved in described cases, which show an energy efficiency value from 20% up to 25% of the former consumption in EU-countries and from 20% up to 60% in the CEE-ones. Differences result from the construction systems and building materials employed for existing houses, from refurbishment technologies and materials as well as from advanced heating systems and technologies.
• ECB-Slovakia has elaborated an energy efficiency action plan template, which has served as a model for all partners in case of need. This template gives instructions for preparing an action plan, description of energy saving potential, targets for energy efficiency policy, general energy efficiency policy, energy efficiency support policy, financing energy efficiency projects. More partners than anticipated have delivered their own action plans: EERI-Estonia, EKODOMA-Latvia, ECB-Slovakia, SEC-Bulgaria.
• Within the dissemination activities, 13 workshops and seminars were organised mainly focused on innovative concepts for building refurbishment, articles and broadcast session were made, and all the activity was also presented on the OPET Building webpage.

Actions
- Seminar, Workshop
- Exhibition
- Webpage
- Newsletter
- Cross country report

Financial resources and partners
Partner countries: Slovakia (project leader), Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Germany, Slovenia, Italy.

Results
The results of the project are laid down in the following deliverables, which are all available on the OPET Building webpage:

• 10 National reports in residential sector (Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, Italy, Germany, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Bulgaria and Hungary).
• Cross national report in residential sector elaborated by ECB-Slovakia
• 20 successful case studies of building refurbishment mainly in apartment building, also with the assessment of the energy savings and payback periods of the measures
• Template for preparation of the action plan concerning the assessment of the market, technology and economic potential for energy savings related to building stock refurbishment
• 4 Draft action plan addressed to decisions makers have been elaborated by EERI-Estonia, EKODOMA-Latvia, SEC-Bulgaria and ECB-Slovakia.
• 17 workshops and seminars were organised in the partner countries

The projects results have lead to following conclusion:

In the field of residential buildings refurbishment, an essential difference exists between old EU-countries and CEE-countries. Whereas in old EU-countries, the refurbishment concerns rather older individual apartment houses built in the period from 1900 up to the 19-sixties, the main problem of CEE-countries resides in the mass build-up of concrete panel apartment houses in the period from about 1960 up to 1990, with low level of thermal insulation and construction faults.

It may be stated that relevant enterprises in CEE-countries have substantially mastered the refurbishment technologies in the field of construction (thermal insulation of building envelope, change of windows, etc.) as well as at the field of services (heating system refurbishment, ventilation, etc.) with some divergences in the quality, but without specific problems.

Based on described case studies, they have achieved savings in a range from 20% up to 25% of the former consumption in EU-countries and from 20% up to 60% in the CEE-ones. That means, the assessment of market saving potential in the residential sector in an amount of 20% (and even more) of actual consumption is correct.

Implementation of buildings refurbishment in CEE-countries is no longer a problem of mastering the relevant techniques and technologies, but above all a problem of financing (access to capital, prices, payback period, etc.)

State (government) financial promotion of refurbishment in particular countries is on a different level, but is essentially insufficient. Besides the poor state budget, a major problem is the inability of relevant decision makers to recognise that financial promotion of refurbishment may be a sound investment from the point of view of national economy.

The implementation of refurbishment measures needs the acceptance of the end users, i.e. all tenants, apartment owners in the given building, and this represents a significant barrier. However, if the property owners are convinced that the refurbishment will be beneficial, they are much more likely to accept it. Based on concrete experiences, the most efficient incentive instrument to convince the users is individual metering of heat and DHW of each apartment. The following figure 1 is a clear confirmation of this.

Figure 1: Reduction of heat energy consumption

Lessons learned and replication potential
The processing (evaluation, comparison, calculation, etc.) of data concerning the residential sector, delivered by cooperating partners from different countries has shown a persistent need for a consistent, unified nomenclature of energy values, where the content of them should be defined. It would allow creating a serious database of reliable statistic data needed in each country. Otherwise, the elaboration of common projects, studies, etc. will be very complicated.