Challenges and benefits of building sustainable cooperative housing

This research has the goal of determining, comparing and substantiating the actual outcome of using sustainable practices, from a financial and environmental comfort point of view. The selected context was of interest due to the challenge of quality sustainable construction at controlled costs, meant for inhabitants of the Portuguese cooperative housing, due to its economical implications and especially its social ones. Two case studies of cooperative housing developments built in Portugal are presented, the first with characteristics of traditional construction and the second including sustainable building features. With these examples, it is intended to demonstrate that it is possible to build below cost limits imposed by law in order to substantially reduce energy consumption costs for heating and cooling as well as for domestic water heating. So, calculations of energy savings in indoor heating and cooling, as well as for domestic water heating are presented in this article for two specific situations: first, for a standard comfort use of housing, as opposed to a situation of real consumption of housing developments as obtained by monitoring carried out for one year in the same dwellings studied for standard comfort. The causes that lead to a substantial decrease in energy consumption in the building of sustainable construction are also described, as a starting point to the improvement of future cooperative housing. Finally are presented, for each of the two situations, calculations of the payback period of investment, according to the specific incremental cost in sustainable construction and the benefits in reducing consumptions. The results show an effective contribution to the improvement of the environment and environmental comfort, due to sustainable construction. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.