As a result of increased energy prices more and more energy-efficient homes are coveted. An energy-efficient alternative is passive houses, which is characterized by an extremely well insulated building envelope that recovers the heat without the use of radiators or under floor heating. But a passive house requires a higher investment cost than a conventional building project, since it will require more construction materials, training of construction workers, greater land area, and long construction period. But the lower operating cost expects to pay back the higher cost of investment. We therefore question how profitable a passive house is in relation to houses built according to modern conventional building techniques. The aim of our study is to investigate the viability of passive houses compared to conventional houses. By using economic tools we intend to pursue this question of profitability to see where, when and how costs and revenues emerge. Our report resulted in a case study where we looked closer at the passive house project Oxtorget and the conventional project Apollofjärilen, which both are owned by Finnvedsbostäder in Värnamo. Through interviews with Per-Magnus Rylander, project manager for Oxtorget, and Jan-Olof Fag, operation manager for Oxtorget, we got access to sufficient information about the two projects to compare the various profitability calculations, to finally discover which of the two projects that was most profitable. With the help of our collected empirical data and economic tools, we concluded that Oxtorget became an unnecessarily expensive passive house project. This is because Oxtorget was built in such an early stage that information and experience from passive technology was missing, which involved a cost to the construction team to learn new technologies. Besides, there were only two offers, which meant less competition and therefore a high price. But it is primarily Oxtorgets planning cost that has affected our profitability calculations adversely. Since the building was appealed it required two planning’s which made Oxtorgets investment cost more difficult to recoup. But thanks to government contributions and low rates, we could still come to the conclusion that Oxtorget was a profitable venture, but nowhere near as profitable as we initially expected. Finally, we found out that we believe that if a similar comparative study carried out in which the passive house project follows a normal building process we will see a significant change of the result. We have also realized that the rate plays a significant role on projects profitability. For this reason, we have finally found that minimized investment costs are the most important thing to ensure that a passive house is more profitable than a conventional house.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hh-5637 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Ekblom, Anna, Ernér, Anna |
| Publisher | Högskolan i Halmstad, Sektionen för ekonomi och teknik (SET), Högskolan i Halmstad, Sektionen för ekonomi och teknik (SET) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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