Cost optimality and nearly-zero energy in building renovation. Multi-residential building in Albania case study

In order to comply with the climate change mitigation, the EU has introduced the European Directive on Energy Efficiency in Buildings. The two most important concepts of these directives are cost optimality and nearly-zero energy buildings. Cost optimality is focused on costs, and nearly-zero energy buildings is focused on low energy consumption and renewable energy sources. In EU, building sector is the major responsible for energy consumption and the existing buildings represents a major share of it. To meet EU energy and climate targets, it is necessary to take actions for large scale energy renovation of the existing building stock. There is a huge potential for energy and emissions saving in existing building, but still it isn’t fully exploit since studies are focused mainly on new buildings. Most of project are focused on costs, and because of the long payback periods, often there are missed opportunities on improving further the energy performance of an existing buildings. The methodology used in this study takes into account several energy measures scenarios and compare them to a reference scenario, which does not improve the energy performance of the building, but only restore its functionality. In this way we can explore a full range of cost-effective scenarios to find the best solution depending on the country targets such as economically, energy consumption or carbon emissions. Using a multi-family building located in Tirana, one the most common building in Albania, this study investigates the range of cost-effective packages of energy retrofit measures. Adopted approach can provide insights for analogous researches and outcomes can be considered for similar retrofit cases in Albania.