Life cycle thinking toward sustainable development policy-making: The case of energy retrofits

Abstract Viable implementation of building energy-efficiency policies is inevitable to mitigate climate change, above all as buildings account for around 40% of the world's energy consumption. Although some 75% of all buildings in Europe are energy-inefficient, only 0.4–1.2% of the whole stock is renovated each year. The greatest challenge for the coming decades is to increase the rate, quality and effectiveness of building renovation. The overall goal of the present article is to illustrate the key role to be played by Life Cycle Thinking in sustainable development policies and its implementation in the design of optimal retrofit solutions. The main housing renovation policies implemented in Spain were submitted to analysis using the focus of Life Cycle Approaches. Representative case studies were selected based on the analysis of 3245 real renovation solutions funded by policy programmes in the period between 2010 and 2014. Current solutions were assessed and compared to other retrofit scenarios that a priori might seem more desirable when striving for energy-efficient buildings. Multi-criteria assessment results reveal that the current renovation strategies applied in Madrid and Seville are, by no means optimal solutions, while only a small additional cost could produce significant performance improvement in Bilbao. The Passivhaus standard that offers the greatest reduction of energy consumption in all three cities would appear, however, not to be the solution of choice for any of them. These findings demonstrate the need to integrate Life Cycle thinking into the building process to identify the most sustainable energy pathways.