Assessing the Impact of Insulation for Swedisol
The Situation
There is often a preconceived idea that the upfront carbon impact of insulation outweighs the environmental savings of the insulation benefits in operation.
As a result, the insulation company Swedisol wanted to investigate the effect of thicker mineral wool insulation in new construction and additional insulation into renovations from a life cycle approach to climate, energy and cost benefits.
The purpose of the project was to analyse the insulation based on:
- The time for repayment of the investment cost for the insulation from a private and socio-economic perspective.
- The time it takes to save the same amount of energy used in the production of mineral wool insulation.
- The time it takes for the insulation to reduce energy use and thus climate emissions so that the reduction corresponds to the climate emissions in the production of the insulation.
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Our Solutions
Anthesis developed an Excel-based tool that takes input values in the form of a building’s energy use and geographical location and compare it to the climate and cost impact of producing the mineral wool insulation. The tool calculates the number of years it takes to pay back the energy used, and the emissions produced for the production and installation of the insulation. Factors that were examined included:
- U-value and thermal resistance and the energy use during the building’s lifetime.
- Energy use and climate impact in the production of insulation; based on an average of the stated energy use and climate impact in the EPDs of the mineral wool insulation manufacturers who are members of the trade organisation Swedisol. This is after adjusting the values presented in the EPDs so that they represent the same properties (functional unit, thermal resistance)
- Climate investment cost
- Private and socio-economic value of the energy savings.
Impacts of the Project
The assessment provided Swedisol a picture of synergies and conflicts of interest with the installation of thicker mineral wool insulation or additional insulation.
It also gave the company the background on the key factors that impact the result to better understand how they could improve high impact aspects.
Lastly, Swedisol was provided a functioning Excel tool that gives the company the ongoing opportunity to change some of the parameters, test different option and see how this impacts the result to continue to work towards the optimum solution for each of the building scenarios.
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