Niall Dunphy
Dr Niall Dunphy is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Engineering and Architecture and the Environmental Research Institute at University College Cork, Ireland. He is the Director of the university’s Cleaner Production Promotion Unit, a multidisciplinary research group working at the intersection of the social sciences with science and engineering. The group conducts engaged research centred on the theme of society, sustainability and energy. Niall’s research interest are focused around the human dimension of sustainability, with a particular emphasis on people’s relationship with energy and the energy system.
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There are three broad strands of performance metrics that are applied to decision-making in building energy retrofits, viz. energy savings, financial return and more recently, reduction of carbon emissions. Best practice involves consideration of these metrics on a whole life basis using approaches derived from methodologies such as life cycle cost analysis (LCCA), and life cycle assessment (LCA).
However, obtaining satisfactory (not to mention optimal) choices requires acknowledgement of a number of different performance risks associated with these lifecycle metrics and necessitates the development of approaches to reflect them in the decision-making process.
This paper contributes to the required discussion by examining conventional approaches to assessing building energy retrofits and by identifying and exploring a number of performance risks.
• Trade-offs between current and future impacts - an integral part of decision-making processes in many domains, but difficult questions arise as to whether and how to apply discounting to environmental impacts;
• Temporal homogeneity within life cycle inventories - the aggregation of data along the product’s life cycle, with no allowance for timing, of emissions for example, may result in inaccurate estimates of impact and thereby affect the quality of decision-making;
• Reduction of carbon intensity of centralised energy grids - affects the quality of carbon saving predictions from energy retrofits, which heretofore have used a static model of carbon emissions from centralised energy grids;
• The unknown and possibly unknowable longevity of retrofit solutions installed - many of which are new technology, creates problems when attempting to determine their life cycle impacts.
This report should be considered in conjunction with its companion deliverable, D3.9 Energy Governance Analysis and Typology for Communities. Taken together, they provide an overview of the key factors currently impacting CEC formation in Europe and the governance frameworks that are driving it