Retrofit an Existing Building Envelope as a Tool to Improve the Energy Performance of Buildings

Abstract

While existing buildings consume about 25 liters on average, some buildings, even require up to 60 liters, therefore, enhancing the energy performance of the existing building will have a significant impact on the reduction of electrical energy consumption resource efficiency. Retrofitting processes are important for improving energy consumption, especially at residential building, as it represents the largest category in electricity consumption by 40 %. The most important aspect in the retrofitting process of the building envelope, are mainly the glazing type and characteristics and the thermal insulation of walls and roof. For this, an extensive literature review was implemented in Immobilia building, to set a baseline assessment of the building’s energy use and compare it with energy performance after retrofitting. This includes upgrading the glazing with a shading coefficient from 0.76 to 0.37, a wall thermal insulation of the building’s envelope from 1.64 to 0.42 W/Km2, and a cool green roof with a U-value of 0.424 W/m2 K and LAI 3 was applied. Results show that applying these retrofitting measures led to a reduction in energy use by 40 % from the baseline average energy use about 192.6 KWh/m2 yearly which is reduced to 113 KWh/m2.