5 Non-residential sector
5.9 Renovation activities
In this section a brief description of the main renovation activities in each country is given, if available. For France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and the United King-dom no data were found. In all countries, there are studies ongoing on the indoor air quality of schools.
Austria
In general, renovation activities for the purpose of energy efficiency take place more often in government owned buildings. In the shopping and leisure sector, fewer buildings are renovated than newly built. For educational buildings and hospitals the opposite occurs. In these sectors the renovation rate is high and new schools and hospitals are rarely built. Data from the ISIS database indicate that outer façade insu-lation is applied yearly to 6% of office buildings, 4% of shopping and leisure build-ings, and 8% of schools and hotels. Completely new façades are installed yearly in 8% of office buildings, shopping and leisure buildings and schools, and in 10% of hotels. Roof renovation takes place yearly in 9% of office buildings, 8% of shopping and leisure buildings, 12% of schools and 13% of hotels.
Finland
There is only detailed information available about the buildings owned by municipali-ties. They represent 9% of the non-residential building stock. From 1980 until now, the investments for the renovation of non-residential buildings have increased in Finland and are expected to increase more. Up to now 49% of the existing offices, 28% of meeting and cultural buildings, 63% of educational buildings, 58% of hospi-tals and 34% of nursing homes have been renovated.
Netherlands
The average energy use and indoor environment of educational buildings is far below the standards in other non-residential buildings. Research shows that the indoor air environment of 80% of the schools is unhealthy. This is the reason why the govern-ment started a large renovation project called ‘fresh schools’ to improve the quality of the indoor environment in schools by renovating the ventilation systems. Renova-tion of the heating, cooling and ventilaRenova-tion systems in office buildings may be related to complaints by employees. 24% of employees seem to be dissatisfied with the
in-Table 5.18: Ventilation systems in Swiss non-residential build-ings *
door environment. Table 5.18 gives the percentage of buildings that have been vated. Only a small part of the non-residential building stock has never been reno-vated.
% Built or
reno-vated after 2000
Never reno-vated
Renovated be-fore 2000
Total
Office buildings 43 14 43 100
Shopping buildings 38 9 53 100
Educational build-ings
48 10 43 101
Health care build-ings
39 16 46 101
5.10 Summary and conclusions
The following conclusions are drawn from the analysis presented in Chapter 5:
Quality of data
The main conclusion for the non-residential sector is that there is a lack of quantita-tive data of sufficient quality. Most data that were found are estimates based on ex-pert judgement. Although these data give an idea of the specificities and quality of the non-residential building stock, they have little statistical value. There is, in par-ticular, a lack of data on
1. the physical building quality 2. the types of building services used
3. the energy efficiency of the non-residential building stock 4. the construction periods
5. the ownership structure
A major recommendation related to the non-residential building sector is to launch national or European statistical studies to regularly collect data of better quality than the current data. The possibility of relating these future studies to the data collected through the EPBD should be taken into account. A point of attention should be the comparability of data between countries and sectors.
Quality of the non-residential building stock and stakeholders
1. Because the non-building related energy use seems to increase regularly and considerably, it could be interesting to look at building concepts that also help to reduce this electricity use.
2. Although the energy use for cooling is still low on average, there is an in-creasing trend towards cooling buildings.
3. Indoor air quality problems in schools are mentioned in several countries and could be an incentive to sustainable renovation.
Table 5.18: Renovations in the Dutch non-residential buildings (%)
4. The sector “shopping and leisure buildings” seems to have a high specific en-ergy use. Because this sector also accounts for a large part of the floor area of the non-residential sector, attention should be paid to it.
5. A large part of the existing non-residential buildings are still not well insu-lated.
Increased demand for cooling systems is not necessarily a problem because the need for cooling is a logical consequence of better insulated buildings in moder-ate climmoder-ates. However, research is needed to determine optimum levels of insula-tion and the balance between heating and cooling. Although schools are not the most energy intensive sector, educational buildings may offer good opportunities for sustainable renovation because of the related indoor air quality problems, be-cause of the fact that they are mostly owned by national or local authorities, and because of the educative and promotional results that could be achieved. Addi-tionally, the sector “Shopping and Leisure” is of interest because of its high en-ergy use. Because most shopping buildings seem to be privately owned (owner-occupied or rented) policies for sustainable renovation in this sector should take into account the specificities of Medium and Small Enterprises.