New white paper: ‘Energy-efficient renovation as an opportunity’
Building renovations offer an opportunity to make properties more energy-efficient, improve living conditions and sustainably increase value. The new white paper ‘Energy-efficient renovations’ shows readers how to go about it and highlights worthwhile strategies and measures.
Building stock accounts for around 40 per cent of Switzerland’s energy consumption and a quarter of its carbon emissions. To effectively improve environmental sustainability, we need to speed up the renovation of existing buildings. Despite the great potential for saving energy, emissions and costs, the renovation rate has been stagnating at just over 1 per cent for years now. Subsidy programmes, tighter legal provisions and stricter requirements for building labels aim to help meet the target of net zero by 2050.
Benefits of energy-efficient renovations
Property portfolio owners benefit from energy-efficient renovations in numerous ways. The lower operating costs that come from greater efficiency and renewable energies improve rentability, predictability, value retention and investor appeal. Renovations are usually more environmentally responsible than replacement buildings, as they cause fewer grey emissions. They also leave existing neighbourhoods and social structures intact.
Analysing buildings, defining a strategy
The start of a renovation project involves establishing the current state of the property and identifying the potential for optimising energy efficiency, carbon emissions and profitability. Whether it makes more sense to carry out a comprehensive renovation, partial renovation or value retention depends on factors including the condition of the building, market potential and financial resources. You will also need to decide whether it is more advantageous to conduct a complete renovation or divide it up into stages, and whether to carry out the work with the buildings occupied or not.
Cost-efficiency – looking at the entire life cycle
Cost-efficiency is a key barrier to higher renovation rates. But as well as considering the investment costs, it is important to take into account capital and operating costs and the increase in value. Investments only account for around 20 per cent of life cycle costs, with the remaining 80 per cent attributable to operations.
Energy-efficient renovations are the key to decarbonisation of building stock. But they’re not just a climate policy imperative – they also offer owners a wide range of opportunities for increasing the value of their portfolio and making their buildings fit for the future. The new white paper ‘Energy-efficient renovations’ shows how it all works.