Elsevier

Energy and Buildings

Volume 253, 15 December 2021, 111507
Energy and Buildings

The impacts of restoration and reconstruction of a heritage building on life cycle energy consumption and related carbon dioxide emissions

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2021.111507Get rights and content

Abstract

Today, about 35% of global energy consumption and related carbon dioxide emissions are caused by the construction sector. This paper evaluates and compares the life cycle energy consumption (LCEC) and carbon dioxide emissions (LCCE) of a heritage building (BT1) constructed in 1875, a new building (BT2) constructed with modern constructional elements with similar plans of the heritage building and the heritage building after the restoration and refurbishment (BT3) by using real data from the construction site of a real project in Gaziantep, Turkey. It is calculated that, the operational phase was dominant over the buildings lifespan and BT1 has the highest operational energy consumption. LCEC and LCCE of the BT1, BT2 and BT3 are calculated to be 102.63, 70.13, 78.07 GJ/m2, and 14.18, 9.75 and 10.06 tons of CO2 per m2 (tCO2/m2), respectively. With current techniques and methodologies the refurbishment and restoration of the heritage building increases the embodied energy (EE) by 56.6%. Selection of appropriate construction materials for refurbishment of heritage buildings is an important procedure that prevents excessive increment of EE and related emissions. Sustainable structural restoration of heritage buildings should be performed by using appropriate methodologies observing the conservation principles of history, energy and environment.

Keywords

Energy consumption
Embodied energy
Carbon dioxide emissions
Heritage buildings
Restoration
Life cycle assessment
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