A U.S. study confirms the economic value of residential energy redevelopment

To achieve significant savings in the bill minor interventions such as boiler replacement are enough. Equipping buildings with efficient boilers, high-quality windows and doors or using compact fluorescent light bulbs is now the common custom of our daily lives, but we are not always able to measure the actual savings resulting from the use of these instruments because very often the savings is measured during "designing" and not during real use of these technologies.

 

The Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation together with Living Cities commissioned a new study out later this month that includes the analysis of 19 thousands housing units in New York subject to energy redevelopment. This study shows that the changes necessary to achieve energy savings represent an average 19% savings on annual utility bills.

The goal of Living Cities is to raise awareness of building owners and banks on using these new technologies for energy redevelopment. The concrete example is given by the two apartment blocks including 88 residential units on West 48th Street in Manhattan. In this block, with the only use of new boilers and heating control system, the tenants have paid half the cost of previous energy bills.

The promoters of the study re-propose to increase the number of residential redevelopment and that data are taken into account by financial institutions to be some flexibility in granting loans because they think redevelopment does not occur because of lack of information and tangible, real data.
The study also identified a tool available to banks to confirm the accuracy of the energy audit. Analyzed buildings were in fact divided into categories that depend on the age of the building, its heating system, the electrical infrastructure and other factors. This analysis allows to compare data collected from the study with the building in question to verify the accuracy of measurements made.