Heating energy consumption and environmental implications due to the change in daily habits in residential buildings derived from COVID-19 crisis: The case of Barcelona, Spain

Monzón-Chavarrías, M. (Universidad de Zaragoza) ; Guillén-Lambea, S. ; García-Pérez, S. (Universidad de Zaragoza) ; Montealegre-Gracia, A.L. (Universidad de Zaragoza) ; Sierra-Pérez, J. (Universidad de Zaragoza)

Resumen: The COVID-19 crisis has changed daily habits and the time that people spend at home. It is expected that this change may have environmental implications because of buildings’ heating energy demand. This paper studies the energy and environmental implications, from a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach, due to these new daily habits in residential buildings at their current level of thermal insulation, and in different scenarios of thermal retrofit of their envelope. This study has a building-to-building approach by using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) for the residential housing stock in the case of Barcelona, Spain. The results show that a change in daily habits derived from the pandemic can increase the heating energy consumption and carbon dioxide emission in residential buildings by 182%. Retrofitting all buildings of Barcelona, according to conventional energy renovation instead of nearly Zero Energy Buildings (nZEB), will produce between 2.25 × 107 and 2.57 × 107 tons of carbon dioxide. Retrofitting the building stock using energy recovery is the option with better energy and emission savings, but also is the option with higher payback time for buildings built until 2007. The methodology presented can be applied in any city with sufficient cadastral data, and is considered optimal in the European context, as it goes for calculating the heating energy consumption.

Idioma: Inglés

DOI: 10.3390/su13020918

Año: 2021

Publicado en: Sustainability (Switzerland) 13, 2 (2021), 918 [19 pp.]
ISSN: 2071-1050

Factor impacto JCR: 3.889 (2021)

Categ. JCR: ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES rank: 57 / 128 = 0.445 (2021) - Q2 - T2
Categ. JCR: ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES rank: 133 / 279 = 0.477 (2021) - Q2 - T2
Categ. JCR: GREEN & SUSTAINABLE SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY rank: 35 / 47 = 0.745 (2021) - Q3 - T3
Categ. JCR: GREEN & SUSTAINABLE SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY rank: 7 / 9 = 0.778 (2021) - Q4 - T3

Factor impacto CITESCORE: 5.0 - Social Sciences (Q1) - Engineering (Q1) - Energy (Q2) - Environmental Science (Q2)

Factor impacto SCIMAGO: 0.664 - Energy Engineering and Power Technology (Q1) - Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment (Q1) - Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law (Q1) - Geography, Planning and Development (Q1)

Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/UZ/UZ2020-TEC-07

Tipo y forma: Article (Published version)

Área (Departamento): Área Construc. Arquitectónicas (Dpto. Arquitectura)
Área (Departamento): Área Expresión Gráfica en Ing. (Dpto. Ingeniería Diseño Fabri.)
Área (Departamento): Área Urbanística y Ord.Territ. (Dpto. Arquitectura)
Área (Departamento): Área Análisis Geográfico Regi. (Dpto. Geograf. Ordenac.Territ.)