An integrated approach for financial and environmental cost optimisation of heating services

A four-year project has started in 2007 to develop a methodology that can be applied to optimize the Belgian dwelling stock. The aim of the project is to optimise buildings concerning their environmental impact, their financial cost and the quality they offer over the whole life cycle, from the production of primary raw materials to the final demolition and end-of-life treatment. In the first phase of the project the optimisation methodology is developed; i.e. environmental impacts are analysed by means of life cycle assessment (LCA); financial costs are calculated based on life cycle cost analyses (LCC); and the quality evaluation is based on multi-criteria analyses (MCA). The aim of the optimization is to realize the highest marginal quality improvement for the additional financial and environmental cost. In a second phase the developed methodology is translated into a work instrument and applied to different dwelling types. This paper goes more deeply into the role heating services play in the environmental and financial costs. For a typical Belgian dwelling initial and life cycle costs for commonly used as well as advanced heating configurations are compared. Since energy consumption for heating is dependent of the way the building envelope is built, the analysis is performed on two dwelling configurations with a different insulation level.