Around 35% of the buildings in Europe are over 50 years old and almost 75% of the building stock is energy-inefficient. A European project VEEP is developing an innovative prefabricated concrete... Show moreAround 35% of the buildings in Europe are over 50 years old and almost 75% of the building stock is energy-inefficient. A European project VEEP is developing an innovative prefabricated concrete element (PCE) system to improve the thermal performance of new buildings (PCE1) and old buildings (PCE2). This study focused on retrofitting of old buildings via over-cladding of the building envelope with PCE2. This study aims to from a building owner/consumer’s perspective to explore the life cycle economic performance of the PCE2 system at an early stage and associated cost optimization strategies under the European context. This study tries to answer four questions: 1) whether the use of the PCE2 leads to an economic advantage over a specific life cycle of an existing building. 2) what is the biggest cost stressor in the life cycle of a PCE2? 3) the potential route for further cost optimization. and 4) how would the discount rate affect the life cycle costs, especially when Europe has entered a negative rate age? A typical apartment building in the Netherlands is selected as the case study for dynamic thermal simulation, in which the heating and cooling energy demands before and after refurbishment with PCE2 will be evaluated. By employing environmental life cycle costing (LCC), the life cycle costs over 40 years and associated strategy for cost optimization will be investigated. This research not only unveils meaningful financial implications on resource-efficient building energy retrofitting in Europe but also provides insight on methodological dilemmas within the application of LCC. Show less
Zhang, C.; Hu, M.; Yang, X.; Miranda Xicotencatl, B.; Sprecher, B.; Di Maio, F.; ... ; Tukker, A. 2020
Urban mining from construction and demolition waste (CDW) is highly relevant for the circular economy ambitions of the European Union (EU). Given the large volumes involved, end-of-life (EoL)... Show moreUrban mining from construction and demolition waste (CDW) is highly relevant for the circular economy ambitions of the European Union (EU). Given the large volumes involved, end-of-life (EoL) concrete is identified as one of the priority streams for CDW recycling in most EU countries, but it is currently largely downcycled or even landfilled. The European projects C2CA and VEEP have proposed several cost-effective technologies to recover EoL concrete for new concrete manufacturing. To understand the potential effects of large-scale implementation of those recycling technologies on the circular construction, this study deployed static material flow analysis (MFA) for a set of EoL concrete management scenarios in the Netherlands constructed by considering the development factors in two, technological and temporal dimensions. On the technological dimension, three treatment systems for EoL concrete management, namely: business-as-usual treatment, C2CA technological system and VEEP technological system were investigated. On the temporal dimension, 2015 was selected as the reference year, representing the current situation, and 2025 as the future year for the prospective analysis. The results show that the development of cost-effective technologies has the potential to improve the share of recycling (as opposed to downcycling) in the Netherlands from around 5% in 2015 up to 22%~32% in 2025. From the academic aspect, the presented work illustrates how the temporal dimension can be included in the static MFA study to explore the potential effects in the future. Show less
Zhang, C.; Hu, M.; Yang, X.; Amati, A.; Tukker, A. 2020
