Cost-effective Passive House renovation packages for Swedish single-family houses from the 1960s and 1970s

This paper evaluates the cost-effectiveness of renovating single-family houses to Passive House level, as compared to maintaining the existing buildings or renovating to building regulation level. The assessment involved life cycle cost analyses, and concerns the Swedish single-family housing stock constructed between 1961 and 1980, which accounts for about a third of Sweden’s two million single-family houses. These houses, now in need of major renovation, are represented in this study by two reference buildings. The results show that Passive House renovations can be cost-effective, but this largely depends on the type of heat generation used in the houses. The most cost-effective individual renovation measure was installing an exhaust air heat pump, and the least cost-effective was installing new windows. In houses using direct electric heating, the Passive House renovation package was the most cost-effective alternative.