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

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)...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Monzón Chavarrías, Marta, Guillén Lambea, Silvia, García Pérez, S., Montealegre Gracia, A. L., Sierra Pérez, J.
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2021
País:España
Institución:Consejo General de la Arquitectura Técnica de España (CGATE)
Repositorio:RIARTE
OAI Identifier:oai:www.riarte.es:20.500.12251/2584
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12251/2584
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85099530679&doi=10.3390%2fsu13020918&partnerID=40&md5=4adf0f68179590138c1eb0d0dbe9ba5c
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Consumo energético
Calefacción
Edificación residencial
Covid-19
Barcelona
Impacto medioambiental
Aislamiento térmico
Rehabilitación energética
Edificios de energía casi nula (EECN)
Ahorro energético
3305.14 Viviendas
3305.90 Transmisión de Calor en la Edificación
3205.08 Enfermedades Pulmonares
6310.09 Calidad de Vida
3308.04 Ingeniería de la Contaminación
3311.02 Ingeniería de Control
Descripción
Sumario: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. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.