1,720,982 research outputs found
Multi actor multi criteria analysis and tools for overcoming barriers in energy-efficient refurbishments
No full textDepreciated Replacement Cost: Improving the Method Through a Variant Based on three Cornerstones
Full text linkWithin the scope of real estate appraisal, the Depreciated Replacement Cost method is mostly seen as a solution of last resort, when no other option is available. Nonetheless, it is ever more useful in addressing various estimation needs. In its basic formulation, the method suffers from several simplifications that lead to rather rough results. Here we try to go beyond these limits. To this end, we propose a variant based on the following three cornerstones. The first is the partition of the replacement cost into its fundamental components, at least according to three cost items: building structure, finishes, and installations. The second cornerstone is the formulation of different depreciation curves for each of the cost items mentioned above, by processing distinct data on useful life and residual life. Finally, the third cornerstone is represented by the definition of a complex depreciation function to take into account both the original useful life of the construction and its lengthening due to partial or full refurbishments
Improving the energetic efficiency of residential buildings: empirical findings from financial evaluation of case studies in Northern Italy. Is it worthwhile?
No full textGreen housing : Toward a new energy efficiency paradox?
No full textBuildings energy efficiency has occupied a prominent place on the agenda over the last decade. This study aims to assess the economic viability of improving the energy performance of residential buildings, by comparing additional costs of investment with the monetary savings achievable through reduced energy consumption.
The evaluation model relies on the methodological framework of Discounted Cash Flow analysis, from a purely financial point of view in which externalities are not considered. The assessment is applied to two case studies located in Northern Italy. For each case study, several energy improvement alternatives are investigated.
Empirical findings can be summarized as follows: at least partly, investing in buildings energy efficiency lacks economic viability; nevertheless, it can be interpreted as a hedge against a sharp rise in energy supply pricing in the coming years.
As original contribution, the achieved findings provide an empirical support to highlight a new kind of energy efficiency paradox: investing in improving the buildings energy performance should allow a reduction to both climate-altering emissions and, in an efficient market, the price of energy supplies; but a decreasing price also lowers the profitability of the self-same investment, and acts as a deterrent to further improvements
The Methodological Framework of Feasibility Study to Support Strategic Planning
No full textDuring the last decades, strategic planning has spread across Italy so that, nowadays, a quite large number of cities have their own plan. This paper aims to provide an insight into the role of the financial evaluation in supporting the implementation of strategic planning projects, under the methodological framework of the Feasibility Study. By discussing the case study of the Strategic Plan of Palermo, the paper highlights strengths and weaknesses of action projects and their dependence both on exogenous and endogenous factors. The paper concludes by stressing the role of financial evaluation as a means to identify weaknesses able to affect the project implementation, as well as to highlight the conditions to be exploited in order to improve the probability of success of strategic projects
The Relation between Building Costs and Embodied Energy : New Insights
No full textSince the Yom Kippur War, and the subsequent Oil Crisis, the energy issue invaded the political, economic and academic debate. Several manufacturing sectors, the building industry as well, have since been committed to achieving a higher level of efficiency in energy use. Under this framework, starting from the end of the seventies, a specific research branch has been devoted to deepening the issue of the energy embodied in various commodities and goods, and, among others, in the construction materials. Nonetheless, during the following decades, this promising research branch has been partly neglected, due to a prominent interest in the building energy consumption in operation. On the contrary, during the last few years, the embodied energy topic has gone back to be a major research item, according to the growing awareness that the energy used to produce the buildings represents a remarkable share of the life-cycle energy. Such a circumstance is not at all peculiar if we consider high-performance buildings, as is the case of the passive house, and it has been validated by several recent studies.
In a recently published study, we show that the energy embodied in building products, except for raw materials, is a positive logarithmic function of their production cost. The embodied energy is inferred by the inventory edited by Hammond and Jones at the University of Bath. Besides, the costs are gathered from a price list of building products, which is commonly used to arrange the bill of quantities of any construction project. In this paper, starting from the aforementioned empirical finding, we aim at providing further insights into the relation tying together the embodied energy and the cost of building materials.
Rather than assuming one-shot estimates of the costs, for each of the considered building materials, we investigate their variation range. Subsequently, relying on a random distribution of all the costs within the identified ranges, we perform a Monte Carlo simulation. By running several trials of one hundred thousand iterations each, we are able to outline the probability distributions of the interpolation functions. The main empirical findings are as follows: there is a well-established relation between the construction cost and the embodied energy, so the former represents a reliable predictor of the latter, and this relation is stronger for some homogeneous subsets of building products
ResearchGate Score, full-text research items, and full-text reads : a follow-up study
No full textThis contribution focuses on the scholarly social network ResearchGate (RG). We take the cue from a recent change in the information shown on each researcher’s profile page, which now discloses the number of full-text reads, in addition to the already provided number of overall reads. Building on the findings of two previous studies (Orduna-Malea et al. in Scientometrics 112(1):443–460, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2396-9; Copiello and Bonifaci in Scientometrics 114(1):301–306, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2582-9), we delve into the relationship among full-text research items uploaded in that platform, full-text reads of the same items, and the so-called RG Score. The dataset examined here provides conflicting results. Firstly, the number of full-text publications and reads is significantly different, along with the RG Score, for the analyzed samples. Secondly, the RG Score implicitly rewards the ratio between the full-texts available to users and total research items. Moreover, the same score seems to be affected to a greater degree by the level of overall reads. However, apart from an indirect relationship, it does not reward how much attention the full-texts get in comparison to the other research items featured in the scholars’ profile pages
Price premium for buildings energy efficiency: empirical findings from a hedonic model
No full textSeveral studies about the relationship between buildings energy performance and residential property prices in Europe have been published in the last years. Nevertheless, there is a lack of studies regarding the Italian real estate market, probably due to the difficulties to access official data on property characteristics and transactions prices.
The purpose of this research is to evaluate the impact of buildings energy performance, as expressed by Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs), on the prices of residential properties in the city of Padua, representative of medium-size cities in Northern Italy.
The study is based on a hedonic price model, which aims at estimating the impact on house prices due to the improvement of energy performance.
Empirical findings show a positive and statistically significant relationship between buildings with better EPCs and house prices. Furthermore, the relationship is stronger between lower classes, than between higher ones. Nevertheless, the study reveals a negative gap between the net present value of potential future savings and the estimated price premium
New insights about the relation between the cost of building materials and their embodied energy
No full textSince the Yom Kippur War, and the subsequent Oil Crisis, the energy issue invaded the political, economic and academic debate. Several manufacturing sectors, the building industry as well, have since been committed to achieving a higher level of efficiency in energy use. Under this framework, starting from the end of the seventies, a specific research branch has been devoted to deepening the issue of the energy embodied in various commodities and goods, and, among others, in the construction materials. Nonetheless, during the following decades, this promising research branch has been partly neglected, due to a prominent interest in the building energy consumption in operation. On the contrary, during the last few years, the embodied energy topic has gone back to be a major research item, according to the growing awareness that the energy used to produce the buildings represents a remarkable share of the life-cycle energy. Such a circumstance is not at all peculiar if we consider high-performance buildings, as is the case of the passive house, and it has been validated by several recent studies.
In a currently publishing study, we show that the energy embodied in building products, except for raw materials, is a positive logarithmic function of their production cost. The embodied energy is inferred by the inventory edited by Hammond and Jones at the University of Bath. Besides, the costs are gathered from a price list of building products, which is commonly used to arrange the bill of quantities of any construction project. In this paper, starting from the aforementioned empirical finding, we aim at providing further insights into the relation tying together the embodied energy and the cost of building materials.
Rather than assuming one-shot estimates of the costs, for each of the considered building materials, we investigate their variation range. Subsequently, relying on a random distribution of all the costs within the identified ranges, we perform a Monte Carlo simulation. By running several trials of one hundred thousand iterations each, we are able to outline the probability distributions of the interpolation functions. The main empirical findings are as follows: there is a well-established relation between the construction cost and the embodied energy, so the former represents a reliable predictor of the latter, and this relation is stronger for some homogeneous subsets of building products
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