RENEWnow – New impulses for the highly energy-efficient renovation of big-volume residential buildings and districts

Although technical solutions for the renovation of multi-storey residential buildings exist, the renovation rate still stagnates at a low level. This means that the ambitious climate protection goals in the building sector cannot be achieved.

The reasons for the low renovation activities are manifold. With the currently usual renovation processes, techniques and costs and the very low prices for fossil fuels and electricity, the reserves from the monthly operating cost bills for property managers are not sufficient to fix extensive renovations. They are only feasible if rental fees are increased significantly. A disadvantage and also wrong in terms of socio-political and business economics is that costs are not accounted for over the life cycle of the building.

At the same time, conventional renovation processes and techniques are very time-consuming and require months of work on site, including the use of scaffolding or even temporary relocation of the residents. Other obstacles include distributed owner structures, complex organizational and implementation processes as well as all questions regarding the assumption of risk with regard to implementation quality and energy savings.
In order to achieve a significantly higher renovation rate, services must be offered that thoroughly simplify the renovation process for property managers and owners’ representatives. Business models, similar to the Dutch concept of Stroomversnelling (or internationally better known as Energiesprong), which offers highly efficient renovation from a single source for single-family houses, are urgently needed. For multi-storey residential buildings, this could be so-called one-stop shops that are similar to general contractors, but with significantly expanded responsibilities.

At the same time, completely new renovation processes are required, which merge construction and building systems with energy conversion based on renewable energy sources and at the same time enable a considerable reduction in costs while increasing the quality of renovation through standardization and industrial prefabrication.

This exploratory project aims to define and analyze a new approach for the highly efficient renovation of multi-storey residential buildings in Austria. This approach has the potential to mobilize the renovation market and to increase the renovation rate by 3 to 5 times from currently less than 1%. By means of a targeted, novel combination of technical (modular and scalable building technology systems, multifunctional building components, modular construction and standardization, industrial prefabrication) and non-technical measures, a new service model (one-stop shop) for property managers and owners is to be developed and to be explored involving leading players from the industry. The service model addresses the issues of overall organization, contract creation, planning, financing, implementation, operational management, accounting, comfort responsibility as well as the risk in terms of implementation quality and savings achieved in a comprehensive and responsible manner. The integration of renewable energy sources, so-called “tenant electricity models” at the building or district level as well as the interaction with higher-level energy networks deliver significant contributions on the way to plus energy districts.

At the end, clear recommendations for action should be given for the implementation of the exploratory results in order to allow a rapid and broad market launch.