Cost effectiveness of energy retrofit solutions: Results from generic calculations with a reference building in Romania

Energy retrofit of the existing building stock is needed at higher rate compared to today, if the European Commission's 20-20-20 goals are to be realized. Economic arguments are not exclusive drivers of the retrofit choices of the privately owned buildings. However, it is certainly important to identify the cheapest solutions to achieve highest CO₂ reduction impact, in order to find the most effective ways to improve the existing buildings. Cost effectiveness is an important priority, since it allows more to be achieved with the same monetary resource. For a given building typology, located in a certain economic environment, it is far from trivial to choose the most cost effective technologies for renovation. It may be that the cheapest solutions based on immediate cost are readily identified by the stakeholders, but once life time costing is brought into the picture the long term efficiency is much harder to asses. In this paper the cost effectiveness of several renovation packages is assessed in relationship with the multi-family prefabricated concrete buildings, which occur widely in the building stock in Romania. The results show several of the building envelope's retrofit solutions to be cost effective in mitigating CO₂ emissions in these buildings. It is also found that changing the heating method from the currently predominant district heating to more decentralized systems can also lead to both important cost savings and CO₂ emission reductions, in particular if heat pumps are used.