Energy retrofit evaluation in residential construction : a life cycle thinking approach

Buildings play an essential role in energy use and climate change mitigation, consuming more than 40% of the global energy and releasing one-third of total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The deteriorating energy and emission performances of existing buildings have been identified as a critical concern in this sector. Older buildings mostly use non-renewable energy resources and create much more GHG emissions compared to new construction. Therefore, promoting the energy efficiency of old buildings is extremely important in reducing GHG emissions through retrofitting. However, retrofit decision-making has not been explored sufficiently in literature. Evaluation of retrofit strategies should not be limited to technical feasibility and environmental impacts and should also include the economic aspects. This research aimed to develop a life cycle thinking-based energy retrofits evaluation and decision support framework to identify optimal retrofit packages for Canadian residences. This research proposed a multi-stage approach. In the first stage, life cycle assessment models were developed to evaluate the overall environmental and economic impacts of energy retrofits. Next, a community-level energy retrofits decision support framework was developed by coupling building energy simulation software packages with the Pareto optimization approach developed in the Python coding environment. The proposed framework can optimize retrofit solutions by accounting for the environmental and economic impacts. Finally, the policy recommendations for the penetration of retrofit schemes were proposed. The proposed framework will assist policymakers, planners, and homeowners in determining building archetypes that need to be prioritized for retrofitting, identifying optimal retrofit packages, and designing retrofit strategies for the penetration of retrofit schemes.Applied Science, Faculty ofEngineering, School of (Okanagan)Graduat