Creating the Business Case for the Zero Energy Refurbishment of Commercial Buildings

Creating the Business Case for the Zero Energy Refurbishment of Commercial Buildings

Greco, A.

Van den Dobbelsteen, A.A.J.F. (mentor)
Konstantinou, T. (mentor)
Schipper, H.R. (mentor)
Binnekamp, R. (mentor)
Gerritsen, E. (mentor)

Civil Engineering and Geosciences

Building Engineering

2016-02-19

Net zero energy is already an ambitious target for several buildings, especially since the DIRECTIVE 2010/31/EU that requires increasing the number of nearly zero-energy buildings. The existing commercial building stock needs to be included, in order to achieve the 2020 EU environmental targets. The main barriers of zero-energy refurbishment of existing nonresidential buildings appear to be financial rather than technical, next to a number of other extrinsic factors that do not stimulate such an investment. While a business case for new zero energy buildings is believed to exist, controversial opinions can be found with respect to refurbishment of large buildings. The present research aims at identifying the factors that affect the feasibility of the zero energy refurbishment of existing commercial buildings, while suggesting a number of ways to create the business case addressing the Dutch market. Through the analysis of case studies and interviews to real estate investors, the research identified the financial and technical barriers encountered today to undertake deep energy retrofit. Subsequently, the design interventions needed to refurbish a Dutch office building and meeting the net zero energy target were evaluated using a software complying with the Dutch standards NEN 7120. A risk analysis, with Monte Carlo simulations, showed the influence that some design aspects, energy price and landlord-tenant agreements have on the business case. The study has concluded that a business case considering the energy savings alone is hard to convince investors. However when the design provides additional benefits, such as increasing the property value, the refurbishment can become feasible. This is an important result to promote the refurbishment towards a zero-energy building stock.

net zero energy
refurbishment
commercial buildings
economical evaluation
risk analysis
monte carlo simulations

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:f8177bb6-0cb1-48de-aa61-f71bf3e94461

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2016 Greco, A.