Environmental Impact Analysis of Functional Retrofitting Measures in Buildings

Abstract

A large number of existing building stock in India was built before the implementation of government guidelines mandating the Green Building Codes. These buildings have been operating with various inefficiencies pertaining to their resource consumption and emissions. Literature suggests that the option of functional retrofitting of building has a potential to reduce this inefficiency by up to 50%. This paper investigates this potential by analysing actual cases of functional retrofitting of buildings (for achieving greater operational efficiency) in Indian context. The environmental impact analysis in this study includes the impact categories of primary energy demand, global warming potential, abiotic depletion potential, ozone depletion potential and water resource consumption for both pre-retrofit and post-retrofit scenario of building. The results are then correlated to the initial cost of functional retrofitting for each case in order to identify the inter-relationship and trend with respect to the level of intervention opted for the cases.