Retrofitting a 1970s social housing neighborhood for carbon neutrality - a case study from Austria

The existing stock of buildings plays a key role in achieving goals of energy efficiency and carbon neutrality. Particularly difficult are social housing projects from the 1960s and 1970, which on the one hand were built according to low standards of energy efficiency, and on the other hand are now occupied by an overaged population of lower economic status. In Austria, such neighborhoods constitute a substantial part of the rental housing stock.In this paper we report a project in the city of Salzburg that attempted to analyze the opportunities for converting such a neighborhood toward carbon neutrality. We investigated the legal, institutional, and political framework conditions, analyzed the current technical status of the buildings as well as the social and economic status of the population. In a second step, a number of technical scenarios for investing into energy efficiency of the settlement were developed and evaluated economically. Based on this, we developed recommendations as well as specific steps for their implementation.The paper also takes a critical view of the political and administrative processes, the stakeholders involved and the regulatory framework.