European energy renovation of multi-dwelling building from a Swedish life cycle perspective

Abstract

Abstract The European Union has committed to achieving climate neutrality by the year 2050, with Sweden setting an even more ambitious target of reaching this milestone by 2045. A subgroup comprising 23 pioneering Swedish municipalities, collectively representing 40% of the country’s population, aims to attain climate neutrality by 2030. Globally, buildings and construction sector contribute nearly 40% of total greenhouse gas emissions. Consequently, achieving our climate goals requires upgrading the existing building stock. It is however not clear how this should be carried out in practice since cost-efficiency, energy savings, and greenhouse gas emissions may be competing goals within an energy renovation. This study theoretically investigates four renovation scenarios applied to one representative Swedish building: a limited or deep renovation approach, in combination with a linear or circular renovation approach. Energy, cost and greenhouse gas calculations were based on statistics and renovation projects implemented earlier. Results show that not all energy renovation scenarios lead to a decrease of greenhouse gas emissions during the whole life cycle. In fact, the deep energy renovation scenario using a linear approach shows a slight increase in the total greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, very few individual energy renovation measures are cost-effective when not combined with required maintenance. This illustrates the importance of carrying out multi-criteria analysis when assessing energy renovations in existing building stock to ensure that energy renovations are in line with the desired outcome in terms of reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, energy efficiency, and costs.