The scalability of the building retrofit market: A review study

Buildings account for approximately 40% of the primary energy consumption in the United States. As of 2009, 72% of residential buildings were built prior to 1990 and 86% were built before 2000. As of mid-2011, commercial buildings in the United States had an average age of 50 years. It is foreseeable that these older buildings must undergo repair and upgrades over the next few decades to be brought to the energy efficiency level mandated by energy codes. The current market for building energy efficiency retrofits is estimated around $279 billion with a projected energy cost savings of $1 trillion over a ten year period for buildings built prior to 1980. Yet the current building energy efficiency market primarily focuses on new construction; less than 10% of the high performance building case studies in the public database are of retrofitted buildings. This research reports results from a recent review study. The review study targets the building retrofit market sector specifically, and explores the current market size and why the building retrofit market has not expanded as much in past years. Review of past practice and research efforts reveals that though a building retrofit project, especially a deep retrofit project, is no different than any investment case in business practice, past retrofit projects are rarely motivated and convinced by the cost-effectiveness of the project but more by building owners' desire to “green” the building. Proving the cost-effectiveness and providing informed risk of a building retrofit project are critical in order for the market to move forward and reach a more matured state. Achieving a scaled and healthy retrofit market not only requires technical advance in delivering a building upgrade design but also demands more feedback information from existing building retrofit case studies regarding retrofit performance measurement and verification. The latter is particularly important in improving project confidence among building owners and 3
^rd
party investors.