Heating Energy Consumption and Environmental Implications Due to the Change in Daily Habits in Residential Buildings Derived from COVID-19 Crisis: The Case of Barcelona, Spain

Abstract

The COVID-19 crisis has changed daily habits and the time that people spend at home. It is expected that this change may have environmental implications because of buildings’ heating energy demand. This paper studies the energy and environmental implications, from a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach, due to these new daily habits in residential buildings at their current level of thermal insulation, and in different scenarios of thermal retrofit of their envelope. This study has a building-to-building approach by using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) for the residential housing stock in the case of Barcelona, Spain. The results show that a change in daily habits derived from the pandemic can increase the heating energy consumption and carbon dioxide emission in residential buildings by 182%. Retrofitting all buildings of Barcelona, according to conventional energy renovation instead of nearly Zero Energy Buildings (nZEB), will produce between 2.25 × 107 and 2.57 × 107 tons of carbon dioxide. Retrofitting the building stock using energy recovery is the option with better energy and emission savings, but also is the option with higher payback time for buildings built until 2007. The methodology presented can be applied in any city with sufficient cadastral data, and is considered optimal in the European context, as it goes for calculating the heating energy consumption.

Identification of Measures to Strengthen Resilience in Homes on the Basis of Lockdown Experience during COVID-19

“…The increase in the time that people spent locked down has also influenced energy consumption in residential buildings. The importance of energy renovation in buildings is revealed because of these extreme circumstances [29].…”

Energy and Environmental Effects of Human Habits in Residential Buildings Due to COVID-19 Outbreak Scenarios in a Dwelling near Rome

“…The high profile, i.e., homemaker or a person who spends much time at home (linked also to the COVID-19 pandemic period), entails a lower primary energy need and lower energy consumption (of about 12%), allowing to reduce the CO 2 emissions of about 12%, considering condensing the boiler and heat pump. This could be in disagreement with some studies, which registered an overall increase in the residential sector during the lockdown [26,30]. This work provides an in-depth analysis of building heating system operations, which is useful to understand how different occupancy scenarios could foster the reduction of general consumption.…”

“…Homes have suddenly become places for living, sleeping, cooking, working, studying, and keeping fit, with the possibility (and need) of using appliances at any time. Thus, total energy consumption has changed, affecting energy consumption at a large scale such as in districts or municipalities [23][24][25][26], or counties [27,28], and at a small scale (e.g., homes), as also proven by questionnaire surveys [29] and monitoring [30].…”

BIM Application for Sustainable Teaching Environment and Solutions in the Context of COVID-19

“…Social distancing requires the use of more space with fewer people, thus increasing lighting consumption among other things. The need for ventilation to prevent aerosols [36] also led to an increase in heating consumption [37], and this required, at least in the EIG, an investment in the modification of the fittings of some windows to convert them into tilt-and-turn windows.…”