Retrofitting existing office buildings towards life-cycle net-zero energy and carbon

Luo, Xiaojun

Abstract

Background
Energy devices for achieving net-zero operating energy and carbon generally entails additional embodied energy and carbon during the production and disposal stages. For a building to be considered as truly life-cycle net-zero, the energy use or greenhouse gas emissions occurring across each stage of its life span must be offset. Retrofitting design approach for strict life-cycle net-zero buildings is still quite rare.

Method and innovation
The innovation of this study is to propose an integrated design process to determine optimal retrofitting solutions and achieve life-cycle net-zero. The retrofitting also aims at maximising lifetime payback cost by selecting appropriate installation areas or capacities of each renewable energy device. A real-world office building is adopted as a case study to demonstrate the proposed retrofitting design approach, while 5 different sceneries are adopted to demonstrate different retrofitting situations.

Results and implication
The maximum lifetime payback cost reduction would be 116.3% and 103.5% for life-cycle net-zero energy and carbon for this case study building. The proposed integrated design process can be applied to different types of buildings to transform them into truly carbon-neutral and consequently mitigate climate change-related issues.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 17, 2022
• Online Publication Date: May 19, 2022
• Publication Date: May 23, 2022
• Deposit Date: May 20, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: May 20, 2023
• Journal: Sustainable Cities and Society
• Print ISSN: 2210-6707
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 83
• Article Number: 103956
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2022.103956
• Keywords: Life-cycle net-zero; Office building; Building retrofitting; Life cycle assessment; Embodied carbon; Renewable energy
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/9538835