| dc.description.abstract | European countries are facing social, architectural and environmental challenges. The population is increasingly over-aged and dependent due to demographic ageing. By 2050, 200,000 Norwegians will have dementia and need round-the-clock care in nursing homes. However, COVID-19 severely impacted care homes in Europe. Norway was one of the most resilient countries in the pandemic, but today the staff still handles an increased workload and patients are dealing with depression. Norwegian nursing homes need to be transformed into dementia-friendly high energy-efficient, zero-emissions environments, considering the current context of climate change and global warming. According to the EU’s climate-neutral objective, the building stock must be transformed into zero-energy buildings to achieve climate neutrality by 2050.
Given the previous context, an ambitious and holistic strategy is needed to renovate the long-term care stock in Norway. This thesis aims to investigate the environmental, economic and social impacts of renovating nursing homes in Norway to achieve the zero emissions building (ZEB) ambition level while transforming care homes into dementia-friendly environments. In particular, the goal is to minimise the embodied carbon emissions and reduce the operational energy use of a case study in Trondheim (Trondhjems Hospital) by proposing low-impact but meaningful renovation measures.
The methodology involves a life cycle assessment (LCA) of the embodied and operational energy emissions, net energy use and net energy delivered of two units (sykehjem and dementia wings) in the nursing home. The research method also performs a life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) to evaluate the construction and operational energy costs and an environmental quality assessment (EQA) to estimate the social impacts of the renovation measures on the comprehensive well-being of the residents with dementia. The LCA, LCCA and EQA consider a diverse range of insulation materials (wood fibre and mineral wool), cladding materials (wood and brick) and energy standards (Passive house and TEK17), with the purpose of generating a reference document for practitioners to renovate nursing homes with a dementia-friendly and sustainable approach. The scenarios assessed are externally insulating, internally insulating, changing windows, and transforming the unit into a dementia-friendly environment.
The results show 1.1-1.7 kgCO2eq/yr/m2GFA of embodied emissions in the sykehjem unit and 1.9-3.3 kgCO2eq/yr/m2GFA in the dementia wings. The operational energy emissions are 10.1-13.1 kgCO2eq/yr/m2GFA in the sykehjem and 10.9-15.6 kgCO2eq/yr/m2GFA in the dementia wings. Compared to the baseline scenario, the net energy use and delivered energy are reduced by a 50% approximately. The construction costs are around 7,500-17,000 NOK/m2, and the total costs during 60 years of service life are 16,200-29,300 NOK/m2. Compared to TEK17, the average payback period of the Passive House standard is two years (emissions) and 25 years (costs). Extrapolating the results for all nursing homes in Norway, the total cost of renovating the building stock to be climate-neutral is between 19.4 and 69 billion NOK, depending on the scenario assumed.
The carbon emissions are below Enova’s benchmark for renovated low-energy buildings. However, Trondhjems Hospital cannot reach any ZEB ambition levels because it does not produce enough renewable energy to compensate for the emissions. The nursing home would need around 4,000 m2 of PV panels to be zero emissions. The case of Trondhjems Hospital shows that it is not feasible to have ZEB nursing homes. In order to reach climate neutrality by 2050, policies should focus on lowering energy emissions and promoting renewable energy production technologies at a neighbourhood level (ZEN).
Keywords: nursing home, renovation, dementia, LCA, zero emissions, zero energy, climate neutrality | |
