Much has been said about the throwaway mentality in our society. Buildings account for a significant portion of our emissions, and all too often we resort to tearing down to build new.
Older buildings face new standards
It should be noted that the real estate industry has undergone significant changes in requirements, ranging from building regulations and classifications to indoor climate and environmental standards. For many, these new requirements may have made it easier to build new rather than maintaining the old.
The combination of stricter sustainability requirements, fewer available areas, and high construction costs does not incentivize a new construction boom in the next decades. It is estimated that 70 percent of all buildings used in 2050 already exist today. Many of the buildings now facing the EU's taxonomy can be classified as older.
How can we ensure that it is profitable to keep and maintain buildings rather than build new ones? How can older buildings meet future energy efficiency requirements? The answer, in many cases, lies in retrofitting.
What is retrofitting?
Retrofitting involves adding something new to an existing structure, for instance, energy meters. You can consider it as modernizing the property with new tools that make it more energy-efficient, safer, and/or compliant with new regulations.
Everything from new windows and lighting systems to building automation and smart technology falls under the definition.
But that doesn't mean you have to do everything at once. The wisest approach is to use the building's data to identify measures that will provide the most value for each penny spent. If you do this as a continuous process, you will always make the best and most efficient decisions.
To gain this insight, you need the necessary infrastructure. You can think of it as a doctor being able to deduce a diagnosis with an X-ray machine.
Four tips to get started
We have been involved in many retrofit projects and although the advice we give is situational, these five seem to be recurring:
- Find out what insight you need: There's no point in measuring for the sake of measurement.
- Familiarize yourself with the coming taxonomies and requirements. Make sure the investments you make today are relevant also when regulations are stricter.
- Choose service provider(s): With insight into your energy data, you can choose from various existing solutions.
- Take it step by step: With retrofitting, you can make improvements step by step, as it suits the building's use and budget.
Good data is a good start
Retrofitting and energy efficiency is complex and expensive, some say. It doesn't have to be!
Most buildings are currently wasting energy. Malfunctioning equipment, failed automation, and technology that does not work as expected is far more common than one expects and go on undetected. With quality energy data, you're able to discover and correct such errors - often with great savings as a result.
Further measures will naturally involve varying investment costs, but it will be cheaper than tearing everything down, and with good data, you can choose the measures that make the most sense based on your own needs and investment opportunities.
We deliver data at an agreed price and ensure that the data flows as it should. This means that you avoid the typical pitfalls that come with energy measurement and mapping, such as measurement errors and murky data.
