Comparative analysis of cost-benefit quantification methods for equitable resource allocation in building stock decarbonization: A case study of a small US municipality

Building decarbonization is vital for municipal zero-carbon goals. However, stakeholders often struggle with determining the costs and benefits of decarbonization due to a complex interplay of building stock properties, occupant energy use patterns, different efficiency and sustainability metrics, and a range of incentives at the state and federal levels. Thus, it remains difficult to plan and allocate limited resources and to engage property owners in a targeted effort.

This paper couples a socioeconomic model with bottom-up urban building energy modeling (UBEM) to better understand the building-specific financial burden of building retrofitting. The socioeconomic UBEM aims to help analyze the cost-effectiveness of retrofit measures, incentive allocation, and the impact of using different metric systems to prioritize upgrade measures. The bottom-up analysis provides valuable insights to municipal governments in planning equitable community-wide electrification efforts.

Researchers are focusing on quantifying the costs of home upgrades to predict carbon savings (Walker et al., 2022), evaluating the cost-effectiveness of various decarbonization strategies in residential prototype buildings (Polly et al., 2011; Hyatt, 2022), and developing models to explore homeowners’ willingness to adopt energy-efficient retrofits at neighborhood scale (Berzolla et al., 2023). However, systematic exploration of a broad range of retrofit solutions for individual buildings within a city, their potential cumulative costs, and the ability of residents to afford these retrofits based on their socioeconomic background and the existing incentive structures is understudied.

We build a UBEM with 6,000 buildings for a small municipality in upstate NY, test the xxx most commonly used building retrofit measures, and then explore different tradeoff systems to identify suitable retrofit combinations for each building individually. We map the incentives by integrating neighborhood data such as building program type, construction year, and income levels. Preliminary findings highlight how incentive structures influence the feasibility of building decarbonization measures, creating a dynamic relationship between economic factors, policy, and building physics. As incentives shift, the financial viability and effectiveness of different retrofit measures change, thus impacting the overall municipal strategy for achieving net-zero goals.

The research further explores how different metrics and study boundaries can lead to varying pathways toward full decarbonization. By testing metrics such as a benefit-cost ratio, EUI, and energy-use/carbon-emissions per capita, we discuss their effectiveness in informing policy decisions and investment strategies for local governments.