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Abstract:

The Energy Renovation Program 2020 of the Flemish Government consists of a wide range of actions to substantially improve the energy performance of the existing building stock by 2020. However, part of the building stock is of such deplorable quality that demolition followed by new construction could be a better alternative than renovation. This paper presents the results of a research project that analysed the desirability of a policy action to promote demolition of old dwellings, based on energy related arguments. Apart from stakeholder meetings with both technical and social experts, also a comparative analysis was made to compare renovation with demolition and new construction from the point of view of energy savings, costs and environmental impact. As a conclusion, the analysis showed that, based on energy and cost evaluation, improvement of the energy performance is as such not a sufficient argument for a large scale replacement of old dwellings. On the other hand it also showed that in many cases, in contrast to what is often assumed, the environmental impact of demolition/new construction is not more negative than renovation.