Affordable cost-in-use and neighborhood renewal through energy efficient housing renovations

Abstract

Houses undergoing major renovations in Winnipeg's inner city offer an opportunity to minimize cost-in-use by undertaking energy efficient upgrades. To find the optimum point of upgrades, and to choose priorities, a system of energy use analysis and upgrade evaluation was required. To choose and develop an analysis and evaluation model a house undergoing a full-scale renovation in the West Broadway neighborhood was selected as a test case. EnerGuide for Houses is considered to be the most effective system available for identifying areas of energy inefficiency and estimating their contribution to excess energy spending. A financial model is developed to evaluate the target upgrades for their potential contribution to decreasing cost-in-use. Some of the targeted upgrades are found to be financially beneficial, meaning energy savings would exceed the upgrade costs, had they had been done during the renovation. The EnerGuide Evaluation uncovered a costly oversight in not remedying overall building air leakage thereby demonstrating that to maximize the efforts of renovations community groups need to utilize EnerGuide testing prior to undertaking renovations. Further policy recommendations are included at the end of the document. In order to fully take advantage of current, and proposed, information and programs a systematic and coordinated approach is needed to monitor and evaluate renovation procedures.