Environmental Protection:

Refurbishment or Replacement of Buildings – What is Best for the Climate?

Norwegian Bank “SpareBank 1 SMN” in 2008 decided to reestablish their headquarters in Trondheim. The key question addressed in the process, was whether to rehabilitate the existing building or demolish it and construct a new one.

 Becoming aware of the environmental issues related to the decision, a project was set up to assess the consequences for green building.  The analysis concluded that from a climate point of view the most favourable strategy was to replace the existing construction and build a new one.

The emissions related to producing and constructing the new building are more than twice the size of the refurbished construction.  On the other hand the emissions related to operation, maintenance and development of the refurbished construction are three times the size of emissions related to the new construction.  This is mainly explained by the low adaptability and flexibility of the refurbished construction.

This conclusion is further strengthened when comparing emissions per employee since the new construction is more area effective and makes it possible to increase the number of work places from 500 to 600.  This gives a total emission per employee of app 100 vs. 50 tonne CO2 equivalents.

The demolishing pay pack time is approximately 14 years.

The results from this study were one of the main inputs to the decision process in the pre-construction phase.  SpareBank 1 SMN concluded to replace the existing building.  It is already demolished and the construction of the new building has started.

The methodology basis for this project is based upon the Jomar-concept.  The methodology and results from this project were presented at the conference Joint Action on Climate Change in Aalborg June 2009.