Elsevier

Energy and Buildings

Volume 132, 15 November 2016, Pages 39-52
Energy and Buildings

Building stock characteristics and energy performance of residential buildings in Eastern-European countries

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2016.06.062Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Energy analysis of the housing stock in the Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary and Serbia.

  • Climate, housing stock, building systems, energy sources, user habits.

  • Assessment of statistical data on the housing stock, including renovation activities.

  • Estimates on potential primary energy savings.

  • Partial heating and underheating caused by fuel poverty is an important factor.

Abstract

Countries in Eastern-Europe have similar characteristics due to their common historical and economic backgrounds. A large part of the housing stock has been built during the Soviet era, applying uniform solutions and similar standards, but similarities extend to other periods as well. On the other hand, the differences should also be noted – although the climate is mainly continental, there are significant variations between South and North and between mountainous and flat areas.

In this paper, a detailed comparative analysis is presented for Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and the Czech Republic. The results are based on the residential building typologies developed within the TABULA/EPISCOPE project co-funded by the Intelligent Energy Europe Programme. Typical building types will be presented, covering building structures and systems. Important energy performance indicators are identified and compared, supported by available statistical data about the housing stock.

The added value of the paper consists of the analysis of heterogeneous data sources and collecting and comparing the information of the housing stock under a common comparison framework of building typology data between countries, and the contribution in the harmonization of the building typology approach.

Introduction

Residential buildings in Eastern Europe exhibit numerous similarities in their design, building envelope, ownership structure and even user habits. A large part of the building stock has been built during the Soviet era using uniform solutions and similar standards. Some of these similarities persisted even after the democratic changes in these countries, mostly due to similar economic and political developments. After accession, European initiatives, particularly the EPBD [1] have determined the progress of energy regulations, but the economic limitations remained an important factor. In three of the countries discussed in this paper, the impact of Austria-Hungary (Austro-Hungary Empire) was also notable before the First World War, particularly in major cities in the region.

Large housing estates (panel buildings) are an important, almost iconic, common element of the building stock in Eastern Europe, meriting a closer look. These large, monotonous blocks of flats, mostly using prefabricated sandwich panels, have become a symbol of the Soviet era. They have similar characteristics and problems, and thus have been the focus of energy policy discussions in most countries with a large stock. The seventies and eighties were the “finest moments” of industrialized technology, when this was the construction method of choice. The technology was actually invented in the West, first used in Denmark, England, France and other countries in large numbers before the Soviet Union procured the right to use the technology and developed its own systems. In Russia, most of the apartment buildings were constructed between 1960 and 1985 and as a result, the urban housing stock today consists mainly of a few standard building types [2], [3], [4]. The share of such dwellings in the countries described in this paper is 16.7% on average, representing a moderate figure in the region. Just to provide a frame of reference: Slovakia has 778,000 such buildings, representing 40% of the residential building stock [5] the same figure in Poland is 6,171,000, (49%) [6]. The proportion of these buildings is particularly high in the Baltic countries [7], [8]. To give an example: in Estonia, 45% of the dwelling stock has been built between 1961 and 1990 – multi-storey apartment buildings, mostly with prefabricated technology [9]. In Romania, 29.4% of the dwellings are in apartment buildings, 68.3% of which consist of large panel buildings [10]. In former East Germany, more than 2 million of such flats exist today [11].

In light of the above, there is currently a gap in available literature: comparing different countries is problematic because of the heterogeneity of available data, even in countries that have a similar historical, economic and social background like the ones presented herein. Therefore. this paper aims to fill this gap by attempting to provide a comparative analysis for the residential building stock of four countries in Eastern Europe: Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and the Czech Republic. First, qualitative similarities and differences between these countries will be discussed, covering the most important aspects influencing the thermal performance of the building stock and future development perspectives. After this baseline has been established, a comparative analysis of selected important energy performance indicators will be presented based on the results of the TABULA/EPISCOPE building typology [12]. For the purposes of this paper, policy implications are forgone in favor of the technical aspects of the comparative analysis.

Beside the similarities, some important differences should also be noted. Although the climate is mainly continental in the region, it gets colder from South to North and solar gains become less significant. There are differences in economic development, as well as political priorities. The differences in the energy mix are also significant, having an impact on building service systems and the level of system centralization.

In order to perform a comparative analysis of the residential building stocks in the selected countries, we have used available statistics and the building typology in a bottom-up modelling approach. The typology itself has been developed as part of the TABLE and EPISCOPE projects, supported by the Intelligent Energy Europe Programme with the participation of 18 EU countries, Norway and Serbia [12]. The results of these projects have been published in several scientific articles, all with a different focus: the residential building stock of Greece has been modelled using the typology developed [13], while [14] demonstrated the energy performance of French residential buildings from a fuel poverty perspective using national statistics. In Ref. [15], the differences between top-down and bottom-up approaches in energy statistics has been showcased for Denmark. Research has also been carried out on a larger scale in Ref. [16], identifying 72 building types in the entire EU-25. The buildings were classified in terms of their representativeness, geographical distribution, size, material composition and thermal insulation, grading renovation options based on their life cycle impacts. Using yet another approach, statistics and surveys have been used to analyse the energy performance of Greek residential buildings in Ref. [17].

There have been several studies in the past that focused on the building stock in the analyzed countries. The national censuses were carried out in 2011 in all countries. They give a general overview of the housing stock [18], [19], [20], [21]. The censuses, however, do not provide enough information about the energy performance of the housing stocks. The Czech residential building stock has been previously analyzed from different perspectives. From the energy consumption perspective, only small-scale studies are available. The ENERGO 2004 micro-census shed light into the energy consumption of the Czech households (types of fuel, frequency of system types and their age structure, energy consumption) [22]. A new ENERGO 2015 micro-census is underway, but results are not yet available. In the meantime, other efforts to analyse the energy consumption of the Czech residential sector have been carried out. PanelScan 2009 focused on analysing the renovation perspectives of residential large panel buildings including renovation progress and estimation of the required investment to renovate the rest of the large panel building stock [23]. More recently, studies have been performed to provide a current overview of the energy saving potential in the housing stock [24], [25], [26], [27]. The study “Building Renovation Strategy” by Holub and Antonín [26] is of special interest since it tries to close the gaps of the previously mentioned censuses and studies, by using the concept of the TABLE/EPISCOPE residential typology, the same approach applied in the present paper. In fact, the aforementioned study was later included in the Czech National Energy Efficiency Action Plan [28] demonstrating that the assessment of the energy saving potential and investment required to renovate the overall Czech housing stock is not only of academic interest but also presents valuable information to policy makers.

In Refs. [29], [30], a country profile for Serbia has been elaborated. It includes statistical information about the Serbian building stock, albeit in much less detail and without energy performance analysis. First attempts to formulate a methodology for energy performance characterization of the residential building stock have been made in the framework of the national research project titled “Energy optimisation of buildings in the context of sustainable architecture (NRP 283, 2002–2005), and the published material [31], [32] served as the methodological milestone for further research. Although the formulated methodology included all relevant aspects of energy performance characterization, showcased in the example of Belgrade residential building stock, it lacked the tool for assessing the entire residential stock on the national level. The most detailed and comprehensive analysis has been carried out for Serbia through the collaboration within the TABULA/EPISCOPE project. The results of this research, which included a statistically relevant survey of the national residential building stock, and its energy performance characterization, have been published in several studies [29], [33], [34], [35]. The results of this work are further developed in this paper. Formulation of typology and methodology for energy performance characterization of the building stock has enabled a more detailed analysis of specific groups of residential buildings within the typology, as the one selected in this paper. Also, case studies of the refurbishment potential of representatives of the selected group of residential buildings can be found throughout available literature [36], [37], [38].

The potential for decreasing carbon dioxide emissions from Hungarian residential buildings have been analyzed by [39]. The simplified building stock model in this reasearch can be considered as a preliminary step for the detailed typology developed in our research. The most detailed building energy performance analysis has been carried out recently in 2015 within a representative field survey within the KEOP-7.9.0/12-2013-0019 project, selecting 2000 buildings [40], using the experiences of TABULA/EPISCOPE. However, the results of this project are not publicly available as of this writing.

Finally, the ENTRANZE project should be mentioned with a focus on displaying building data (less detailed than this paper) with a user-friendly mapping tool and on the development of scenarios for building renovations for the EU-28 countries and Serbia [41], [42], [43]. About Bulgaria only the TABULA/EPISCOPE and ENTRANZE projects can be mentioned as previous works to assess the entire residential building stock.

The added value of the paper consists of the analysis of heterogeneous data sources and collecting and comparing the information of the housing stock under a common comparison framework of building typology data between countries, and the contribution in the harmonization of the building typology approach.

Section snippets

Methodology

In the Section 3, the regional characteristics are described covering several aspects: climate, building statistics, typical building constructions, energy sources, typical technical building systems, user habits and renovation actions carried out so far. This descriptive section is exhaustive and detailed as it is mainly based on national data sources and studies available in national languages only.

The second part covers the quantitative comparative analysis. Calculations are based on the

Climate

The energy performance of the building stocks cannot be analyzed without taking climatic conditions into account. The climate is generally continental with hot summers and cold winters, but there are important differences that should not be neglected. The Czech Republic is in the Northwest, where the climate is generally colder and more humid. Bulgaria is in the Southeast, where summers are hotter and winters are milder. In addition to the geographical position, the influence of altitude can

Results

As explained in the methodology section the TABULA/EPISCOPE building types were grouped into 7 larger building classes (Table 3). The results for the 7 building classes are the weighted average of the TABULA/EPISCOPE building type indicators using the national total floor area as the weight. The classes are defined according to the building size (single family house or multi flat building) and construction period (before World War II; after World War II and before the end of the communist

Discussion and conclusions

In this paper, the housing stocks of four countries in Eastern Europe have been analyzed, highlighting the similarities and differences in climate, housing stock, building shell, utilized energy sources, applied technical building systems and building usage. Energy performance calculations have been carried out for heating and domestic hot water according to EN ISO 13790 and the EPBD rules using the TABLE calculation tool.

Slight climatic differences have been identified with an increasing

Acknowledgements

This paper is published as a result of participation in the EPISCOPE research project (Energy Performance Indicator Tracking Schemes for the Continuous Optimization of Refurbishment Processes in European Housing Stocks), with co-funding from the ‘Intelligent Energy—Europe’ Programme, contract No. IEE/12/695/SI2.644739.

Results for Serbia were partly developed within the SLED project funded by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) and implemented by the Regional Environmental Center for CEE.

Field

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