Economic and Energy Impacts of Adaptive Reuse Building Construction

Abstract

Adaptive reuse of buildings is an alternative to a building’s end-of-life where A building’s functional life may be extended to serve another purpose. Many studies suggest that adaptive reuse is more sustainable compared to typical demolition and new construction in terms of environmental, social, and economic impacts. However, these claims are qualitative in nature and are limited to economics at the project scale. This thesis quantifies the energy and economic impacts of adaptive reuse building construction in the Region of Waterloo (RoW) in Ontario, Canada. Input-Output (IO) models were developed to study the impacts of adaptive reuse building construction. First, an IO model was developed for Ontario. Then, it was regionalized into a two-region interregional input output (IRIO) model to study the RoW. The building construction industries’ intermediate inputs and final demands were altered in the Ontario IO model to reflect changes in the building construction industries due to changes in the supply and demand of adaptive reuse buildings. A basic scenario represents the situation where only the building’s superstructure and substructure are reused. The basic scenario was then extended to reflect the reuse of internal non-structural components. The IO models examine impacts to gross domestic product (GDP), industry outputs, employment and energy use, and comparisons are drawn between Ontario and the RoW. It was found that adaptive reuse building construction may benefit Ontario’s and the RoW’s economy and reduce energy consumption under certain combinations of changes in intermediate inputs and final demands. The desired domain of adaptive reuse construction, where energy use decreases, while GDP and employment increases, is discerned for both the residential and non-residential building construction industries in Ontario.