Energy consumption of non-retrofitted institutional building stock inLuxembourg and the potential for a cost-efficient retrofit

The public building stock of a country, consisting of schools, offices, accommodation facilities, single-and multi-family homes, accounts for a high consumption of electrical and heat energy. Therefore, thisstock is often subject to actions with the goal of lowering this energy usage by increasing the efficiencyof those buildings. This is usually done by applying measures to the building envelope like insulationand/or new windows and by using a more efficient HVAC technology. But often, in the initial state, thecurrent energy consumption of such a stock is unknown or only known for single buildings. In this case,the calculation of energy and cost savings is either impossible or not exact. This paper shows a way toquantify and categorize the end-energy for heat use of the public building stock in Luxembourg, whichconsists of a gross area of 1.744 million m2. This analysis was carried out in cooperation with the nationaladministration of public buildings.A certain amount of sample buildings was analyzed and then separated into three groups of low,normal and high end-energy use. The boundaries of these groups were chosen according to literaturevalues, derived from European retrofit projects, which also served as the source for possible renovationcosts. This data was extrapolated to the whole stock. This information serves as a basis for future decisionsconcerning the retrofit of those buildings and makes a calculation of costs possible.As a result, the type of buildings with the highest potential for retrofit measures was identified. Schools,offices and accommodation facilities with a “high” consumption of more than 190 kWh/(m2a) show thehighest economic potential with retrofit costs of 0.04–0.08 D /kWh if their energy consumption is loweredto values of around 90–100 kWh. Other groups of buildings show higher costs of around 0.07–0.19 D /kWh.