A cost benefit analysis of retrofitting public policies on Atlanta residential housing

Shirazi, A; Bozorgi, A; Ashuri, B

A cost benefit analysis of retrofitting public policies on Atlanta residential housing

Shirazi, A

Bozorgi, A Ashuri, B

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Publisher:: Central Queensland University
Publication Type:: Conference Proceeding
Citation:: 43th Australasian Universities Building Education Association Conference CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS, 2019, pp. 406 - 413
Issue Date:: 2019-11-08

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Shirazi, A https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6629-2902	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Bozorgi, A	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Ashuri, B	en_US
dc.date	2019-11-06	en_US
dc.date.issued	2019-11-08	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	43th Australasian Universities Building Education Association Conference CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS, 2019, pp. 406 - 413	en_US
dc.identifier.isbn	978-1-921047-51-0	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/138234
dc.description.abstract	The residential building sector has a major share in carbon emission and energy consumption. In the US, around 60% of the housing stock belongs to the owner-occupied sector. Since more than half of the existing building stock was built before the modern energy efficiency standards are taken place, there is a potential to reduce the energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in this sector, only by retrofitting the existing buildings. However, this goal cannot be achieved without a larger scale Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) to develop and demonstrate market ready retrofit solutions/policies from both the government and the homeowner’s standings. To this extend, the aim of the presented paper is to conduct a city-level CBA on the city of Atlanta which ranked 5th in producing GHG emissions among 100 US metropolitan areas while residential buildings sector is ranked 4th among other contributing sectors. To this end, a hypothetical public policy of retrofitting single-family residential buildings built before 1970s is proposed with the objective of reducing the regional energy consumption rate while calculating the upper bound of the tax to be proposed on the properties rejecting to renovate. The preliminary results of this CBA revealed that although retrofitting all the prior 1970s buildings won’t be beneficial comparing to the status quo, the numbers are highly sensitive to the proposed discount rate as well as the percentage of the homeowners practically decide to retrofit. The sensitivity analysis showed that if only 30-40% of participants decided not to renovate and pay the tax, the CBA could be a positive Net Present Value (NPV) with a relatively low tax rate (less than $0.5/sqft) implementation. Therefore, it is recommended to more accurately study the reaction of the homeowners to the policy before implementing the tax/subsidy rates while precisely observe the fluctuations of the market discount rate.	en_US
dc.publisher	Central Queensland University	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	43th Australasian Universities Building Education Association Conference CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	Australasian Universities Building Education Association Conference	en_US
dc.title	A cost benefit analysis of retrofitting public policies on Atlanta residential housing	en_US
dc.type	Conference Proceeding
utslib.location	Australia	en_US
utslib.location.activity	Noosa QLD, Australia	en_US
utslib.for	1202 Building	en_US
pubs.embargo.period	Not known	en_US
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building/School of Built Environment
utslib.copyright.status	open_access
pubs.consider-herdc	true	en_US
pubs.finish-date	2019-11-08	en_US
pubs.place-of-publication	Australia	en_US
pubs.publication-status	Published	en_US
pubs.start-date	2019-11-06	en_US

Abstract:

The residential building sector has a major share in carbon emission and energy consumption. In the US, around 60% of the housing stock belongs to the owner-occupied sector. Since more than half of the existing building stock was built before the modern energy efficiency standards are taken place, there is a potential to reduce the energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in this sector, only by retrofitting the existing buildings. However, this goal cannot be achieved without a larger scale Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) to develop and demonstrate market ready retrofit solutions/policies from both the government and the homeowner’s standings. To this extend, the aim of the presented paper is to conduct a city-level CBA on the city of Atlanta which ranked 5th in producing GHG emissions among 100 US metropolitan areas while residential buildings sector is ranked 4th among other contributing sectors. To this end, a hypothetical public policy of retrofitting single-family residential buildings built before 1970s is proposed with the objective of reducing the regional energy consumption rate while calculating the upper bound of the tax to be proposed on the properties rejecting to renovate. The preliminary results of this CBA revealed that although retrofitting all the prior 1970s buildings won’t be beneficial comparing to the status quo, the numbers are highly sensitive to the proposed discount rate as well as the percentage of the homeowners practically decide to retrofit. The sensitivity analysis showed that if only 30-40% of participants decided not to renovate and pay the tax, the CBA could be a positive Net Present Value (NPV) with a relatively low tax rate (less than $0.5/sqft) implementation. Therefore, it is recommended to more accurately study the reaction of the homeowners to the policy before implementing the tax/subsidy rates while precisely observe the fluctuations of the market discount rate.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/138234