Some Issues of Energy Performance and Management of Residential Buildings in Norway and North-west Russia

DOI

10.2991/icmce-14.2014.189How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Energy Efficiency, Building Management, Cold Climate.

Abstract

This article summarizes parts of the work conducted in the Kolarctic ENPI project “Sustainable Buildings for the High North” (SBHN). SBHN had strong focus towards residential buildings performance in the northern Nordic and north-west parts of Russia (Barents region). Results show that there is large potential for improvement of the building mass both with respect to energy consumption and building management. The study reveals some important reasons for the differences between the countries. Regarding energy efficiency, the motivation for improving existing buildings energy performance always has a strong economic component. The end user/building owner assesses different measures in the light of investment cost and payback over time. If weak economic incentives exist, building owners are not likely to make investments to improve energy performance of their properties. In particular for Russia, such incentives are weak. In most areas, energy is paid by square meter residential area or even volume, not by actual usage, which means that whatever is used of energy, the total paid price will still be the same. Costly energy efficiency measures are thus not encouraged. Another problem in Russia is how to maintain and manage the shared areas of existing apartment buildings, such as exterior building parts (walls, roof etc.), stairways, technical rooms, storage rooms, outdoor areas etc. The main problem is that no one takes responsibility for this, and as a result the buildings are slowly deteriorating. Management, and consequently modernization, of building facilities is hence a major challenge. It is particularly important in the cold climate regions, where buildings often are exposed to harsh climatic conditions.

Copyright

© 2014, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Bjørn R SØRENSEN
AU  - Raymond RIISE
PY  - 2014/12
DA  - 2014/12
TI  - Some Issues of Energy Performance and Management of Residential Buildings in Norway and North-west Russia
BT  - Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on Mechanics and Civil Engineering
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1052
EP  - 1057
SN  - 2352-5401
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/icmce-14.2014.189
DO  - 10.2991/icmce-14.2014.189
ID  - RSØRENSEN2014/12
ER  -