Guidelines, barriers and strategies for energy and water retrofits of public buildings

Government departments and their agencies occupy a significant portion of building stock, whose annual water and energy costs are substantial. Although it has been demonstrated that retrofitting public buildings can lead to drastic reductions in water and energy consumption with rapid payback periods, in most countries the retrofitting rate is very low. In addition, the focus of retrofit projects is often solely on energy, while water conservation and the water-energy nexus are typically neglected. To improve the current lackluster retrofit rates, the key challenges and potential coping strategies must be identified and retrofit program implementation frameworks developed. This research study adopted a mixed methods approach including scenario modelling and stakeholder workshops and interviews, to achieve such objectives. The comprehensive review identified retrofit project financing and procurement impediments to be the greatest deterrent, although other factors such as education and awareness-raising, which are typically overlooked, were also recognized as being critical. Interviews with stakeholders revealed that governments' willingness to introduce a retrofit program and related supporting mechanisms is also a major barrier to public building retrofitting. Coping strategies for achieving accelerated implementation of retrofit projects were identified as being the introduction of project facilitation teams, revolving loan funding, performance contracting, to name a few. Once such barriers and strategies were acknowledged and refined through stakeholders' consultation, scenario modelling was conducted in order to quantify the benefits of a proposed widespread retrofit program. Modelling results demonstrated a potential five-fold return of capital investment for a nationwide Australian hospital building energy and water retrofit program if the recommended financial and procurement mechanisms were put in place. Such results and final project outcomes were presented to key-stakeholders in order to incentivise decision-makers to implement some of the proposed strategies and finally boost the building retrofitting sector.