Energy performance of existing residential buildings in Europe: A novel approach combining energy with seismic retrofitting

The current European building stock is ageing and requires significant renovation efforts to improve its energy performance and ensure structsural safety. As part of the key actions of the European Green Deal, increased building renovations, a `renovation wave', is needed to ensure that the ambitious EU energy saving and decarbonisation goals can be reached by 2030 and 2050, accordingly. To incentivise renovation further, integrating energy retrofitting with seismic strengthening is explored in this study. A combined energy and seismic retrofitting is investigated across twenty European cities with varied seismic hazard levels and different climatic conditions. Typical building types are defined both in terms of their energy and structural characteristics and are associated to the building population of each city. A monetary metric for combined assessments based on expected annual losses from energy costs and seismic losses is used and an optimum retrofitting scenario is identified. By means of the proposed renovation rate of 3%, a reduction of approximately 30% of primary energy use and CO2 emissions may be achieved within a decade. Taking into account energy costs and costs related to structural damage it is found that a combined retrofitting scheme will reduce substantially the payback periods in moderate to high seismicity regions. In such locations the combined energy and seismic retrofitting is justified and proposed instead of the sole energy retrofitting typically applied today in existing buildings