Milparena – A Network Project for Knowledge Enhancement Regarding Energy Renovation of Multi-family Buildings in Sweden

Other conference contribution, 2011

There are ambitious goals and increased efforts to reduce the use of energy in existing buildings. However, so far most efforts have been and are still related to new “low energy buildings”. This paper is focused on the conditions related to existing Swedish multi-family buildings with rented apartments primarily owned by municipal housing companies. It describes the work within a network with representatives from a university and a large research institute working together with municipal housing companies to enhance the knowledge about the framework for energy renovation of multi-family buildings. It has a holistic approach and the main results are as follows. On one hand, most housing company managers believe it is too complicated or unreasonably expensive to execute a comprehensive energy renovation. On the other hand, too many stakeholders focus on the technical issues, e.g. so called innovative technologies, while economic and organizational matters in most cases are more important to tackle. It is possible to achieve a large reduction of the energy use with existing (expert) knowledge and state-of-the-art technologies, but there are so far too poor incentives for a comprehensive reduction of the energy use in existing Swedish multi-family buildings.