Multicriteria evaluation of sustainable energy solutions for Colosseum

Colosseum is a large office building in the capital region of Finland. The building owner operates on the highly competitive office rental market. With increasing emphasis on environmental responsibility, energy efficiency and sustainable energy solutions can provide competitive edge on the rental market. This study evaluates in terms of multiple criteria different alternatives to enhance the energy solutions of the building. The alternatives included different configurations of solar power, ground source heat, and roof constructions, along with district heating. Decision criteria included internal rate of return, energy efficiency, CO2 emissions, and attractiveness. Attractiveness was evaluated by a set of experts in office building valuation. The alternatives were compared using Stochastic Multicriteria Acceptability Analysis (SMAA), which is a simulation based method for decision problems where different kinds of uncertain information are represented by probability distributions. As novelty, the pairwise winning indices were used to form a stochastic ranking of alternatives. Analyses were conducted both without and with decision maker's preference information. Most preferred alternatives were based on ground source heat. However, these alternatives require extensive renovation to install a hydronic central heating system. If such renovation is considered infeasible, then solar power alternatives become most preferred.