When it comes to new building projects, there is a strong focus on building in a climate-friendly way. Shared databanks, calculation methods and climate requirements have been developed.
However, when it comes to renovation, similar tools are missing, even though renovations account for a significant amount of building activity in Denmark, and that we plan to focus on conserving and renovating even more in the coming years.
The Danish philanthropic organisation Realdania has therefore launched a project aimed at increasing knowledge, developing shared methods, and generating shared data to strengthen the entire construction industry's ability to perform more comparable assessments of the climate impact of different renovation scenarios from a lifecycle perspective.
The results of this project have now been compiled and published in a report entitled 'Renovering er bedst for klimaet’ ('Renovation is better for the climate’), as well as in the more technical background report: 'Klimadata for renovering’ ('Climate data for renovation').
The reports present new knowledge about how to renovate in a way that is better for the climate, and which also makes the most sense from an economic perspective. This knowledge means that along with the construction industry, politicians can now make decisions about conservation and renovation on a more informed basis.
'Until now, we have had little knowledge about how to renovate in the most climate-friendly way, but in this project, calculations of the climate impact have been made for various renovation scenarios covering a number of different building types. The clear conclusion is that renovation is better for the climate and that in a lifecycle perspective even minor renovations are better than demolishing and building anew,' says Thomas Waras Brogren, Project Manager at Realdania, and continues:
'The project group has also calculated the financial aspects of a number of renovation scenarios, and these results show that in the long run renovation is often a more favourable overall economic solution than building anew. Therefore, we can say that renovations will often give the best value for money in terms of climate impact.'
New Emission Factors
Calculations in the reports are based on the Danish 2025 emission factors that will be used for LCA-calculations in the future. They differ significantly from the 2023 emission factors that currently apply, because we expect that our energy sources will have lower CO2-emissions in the future than they do today.
'With the new Danish emission factors, there will inevitably be a greater focus on not only reducing operational energy costs, but also on reducing the climate impact of building materials and the construction process itself. Because we want to reduce climate impact now, rather than years from now, the timing of emissions may well be one of the factors that will receive more focus in the future. It may also become increasingly relevant to use more biogenic building materials. All of this will affect the way we conserve and renovate buildings in the future,' concludes Thomas Waras Brogren.