Energy efficiency renovation strategies for a historic residential building

Climate crisis the World is facing requires radical measures by all citizens, companies, and the governments. We all know that we must act at all fronts to limit and decrease the carbon emissions and the increase in global average temperature below pre-industrial levels. This requirement is now more important for the built environment. At this point, energy efficiency and consumption behaviour havean important role in decreasing the energy demand. According to the International Energy Agency, it is important to achieve deep renovation for at least 20% of the existing building stock to meet decarbonisation targets for 2050 1. However, as the latest studies show that energy savings from implementation of insulation on retrofitting projects disappear in a few years due to the rebound effect2. Therefore, it is crucial to analyse occupants’ behaviour towards a more sustainable lifestyle and to understand the key drivers for human comfort as well as improving energy efficiency. This would bring the highest potential to decrease energy consumption from building stock in line with getting closer tothe 1.5°C goal. In the context, we report study on a historic house as at Fener district of Istanbul as a renovation project. The building is a terraced house with a floor area of 175 sqm. It is in the heritage protection area;therefore, the renovation of the building is challenging due to the restrictions on external touch to the building façade. The project aims to decrease the energy demand by carefully implementing sustainability measures from initial stage to the post occupancy phase. To reach this goal, the key steps are to specify the sustainability strategy, to conduct passive design analysis and occupant behaviour analysis, to achieve high standard and quality during the construction in implementation of energy efficiency features, and finally to finalise the project with soft landing to the occupants. We present a methodology here to show how a challenging project like this one need to be handled to have a lasting impact. © 2024, University of Cantabria - Building Technology R&D Group. All rights reserved.