Using BIM to streamline the energy renovation processes of residential buildings during the early design stages

Abstract

The existing European building stock is responsible for 40% of total energy consumption and 36% of greenhouse gas emissions in Europe. In order to reduce these values, the European Union (UE) has been strengthening and updating the regulations which define the minimum energy requirements for buildings. Therefore, Member States started to increase their energy requirements for buildings, with the purpose to raise their efficiency, reduce their emissions and energy needs, making them more sustainable at the energy level. The renovation of the existing buildings, especially those designed before the first thermal codes is an essential step to achieving the EU proposed targets, due to their low energy performance. Thus, the energy renovation of existing buildings, combined with other sustainable design practices, is a priority to reduce EU's energy dependency and carbon emissions. On this context, this study aims at presenting the energy renovation of a Portuguese dwelling, built in the late 60, using a Building Information Modelling (BIM) approach during the design phase. BIM methodology was used to perform an energy analysis of a case study, in order to discuss the advantages of this approach at identifying the best energy renovation scenario. From this study, it was possible to verify that the main added value of the BIM is that it can streamline the designers' decision making by improving better integrating between different design areas, saving time and money during the design stages and therefore promoting the better efficiency of the building stock.