Austrian GHG emission targets for new buildings and major renovations: An exploratory study

To avoid uncontrollable and uncompensated effects of climate change, within the ratification of the Paris Agreement, 197 countries including Austria have committed to limit their emissions of greenhouse gases to hold the warming below 2°C. Achievement of this objective will oblige Austrian society to stay within a carbon budget of 1000 Mt CO2eq until 2050. Due to the long-life span of buildings as well as their high contribution and reduction potentials regarding embodied and operational greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, specific environmental benchmarks are required for new buildings and major renovations. The evaluation of environmental targets presented in this paper follows a methodology combining top-down and bottom-up approaches. First, GHG emissions and reduction targets are calculated for the emission intensity of the Austrian energy mix with the help of top-down decomposition. Second, a hybrid top-down-bottom-up approach is applied as a basis for establishing GHG emission targets on building level. The embodied and operational impacts of Austrian building stock and from construction of new buildings are evaluated. Following on from this and using the Austrian carbon budget, the reduction targets are set at building level based on the hypothesis for 2050. This paper present and exploratory study and can be presented as a basis for definition of GHG targets.