Environmental, social, and economic benefits of buildings energy retrofit projects: A case study in Iran's construction industry

Energy consumption is rising worldwide and the building sector is responsible for a large portion of it. One of the most effective ways to improve the energy efficiency of buildings is known as building energy retrofitting. However, selection of an optimum combination of energy-saving measures from a great number of possible combinations to perform building energy retrofitting process is a complicated and time-consuming task. This study aims to propose a simulation-based multi-objective optimization method that simultaneously improves environmental, economic, and social aspects of buildings. This model guides the stakeholders of the building industry through decision-making process of building energy retrofit that enables them to achieve the best tradeoff among objective function. After the optimization process, final combinations of retrofitting strategies are obtained and compared with the existing building. Final results demonstrate that performing building energy retrofit in the case study building significantly improves the predefined objective functions for this case study.