Demolition vs. refurbishment for the old houses: a regional cost-benefit analysis

Panel: 5. Saving energy in buildings: The time to act is now

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Dominique Osso, EDF-R&D, France
Benoit Allibe, CIRED, Campus du Jardin Tropical, France
Marie-Hélène Laurent, EDF R&D - Département ENERBAT, France

Abstract

Cost effectiveness of the energy efficiency measures for the building stock is clearly a keypoint to reach the Green House Gas (GHG) mitigation and energy consumption decrease targets in France. In this frame, for the old and inefficient houses without heritage value (e.g. 3 millions in France built from 1949 to 1974), the question of demolition vs. refurbishment arises.

Actually, the refurbishment of old houses is helpful to enhance their efficiency, but if new small multi-storey residential buildings replace them, this could lead to added energy savings due to advanced thermal efficiency as well as promoting sufficiency with the limited dwelling surface per inhabitant and reducing urban sprawl. Moreover, some co-benefits are expected like reduced individual car travelling, and decreasing real estate market pressure allowing access to low or mid-income households.

In this paper, we present a local cost-benefit analysis from a societal viewpoint with:

• Energy savings due to refurbishment vs. energy consumption of the new built dwellings depending on location,

• Cost of retrofitting vs. cost of demolition and construction of the flats depending of the real estate market,

• Assessment of co-benefits: reducing car transportation, access to new building market in chosen area...

For this purpose, we used data from a recent survey on 2012 French representative households together with other data provided by national statistics agency.

Finally, we evaluate the interest of local urban planning to reduce GHG emissions and energy consumption by replacing old houses by new multi-family building in dense peri-urban areas.