Environmental improvement potential of existing residential buildings - managers role and scope of action

Paper i proceeding, 2004

The Swedish building sector is sometimes called the 40% sector, because of its large amount of material- and energy use. Most of the energy use occurs during the buildings’ use phase, more than 80 percent. Even though the use phase has such an important environmental impact, actions to reduce it are slowly taken. Technology to reduce the environmental burden are known, but not always used. Buildings are under control of management and their action is lacking. The way management can influence the environmental performance is through e.g. timing and technical standard of refurbishment, maintenance and organising of services. The aim of this project is to identify different types of management regarding strategies and ways of organising and their possible correlations with environment impacts. By comparing similar existing residential buildings, looking at different types of management and buildings energy and water consumption, such correlations have been established. In a time scale of 10 years preliminary results show that there is a significant difference in buildings consumption data that can be explained by management strategies and ways of organising. Consumption data do not reflect the full consequences of actions done by housing managers, however LCA based foreground and background information is needed. With this information housing managers will be able to identify their direct and indirect environmental impact.