Achieving green building standards via energy efficiency retrofit: A case study of an industrial facility

Abstract

Existing buildings consume more energy than the new ones and building energy efficiency retrofit has a major effect in order to achieve sustainable building targets. Retrofitting not only creates possibilities to reduce energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions of all buildings but also improves occupants' health and thermal comfort. Making a decision for a retrofit action is very important in order to select the most appropriate, energy-efficient and cost-effective scenario for the building. The industrial sector is one of the largest energy consumers with 25.6% of the overall energy consumption in Europe in 2012. However, conducted energy retrofit studies have mainly focused on domestic buildings so far. The focus of this chapter is a literature review of energy-efficiency retrofits and presentation of an approach to find the most convenient, energy-efficient and investor-friendly retrofit scenario for an industrial building. Eventually, the idea is to be able to convince building owners and investors to renovate with energy-saving solutions. In this chapter, energy consumption of a cement factory during its operation, before and after the energy retrofit application, is examined. Results from the analysis ensure that energy-efficiency refurbishment helped to reduce energy consumption of the building and eventually decreased operational costs and carbon dioxide emissions in a very short payback period. Reduction in energy consumption in the building led to an energy cost savings of $169,725 per year. Carbon dioxide emissions decreased by 87%.