Urban environments are rapidly evolving, with a global population shift towards cities and an urgent need for sustainable living, construction and property modernization. This necessitates innovative solutions for urban renewal that address both accessibility and environmental impact. The KONE Upgrade offering supports this renewal by extending building lifecycles and promoting circularity through upgrading existing elevator and escalator systems.
The challenge
Around 200,000 people move to urban areas every day. By 2050 two-thirds of the global population are expected to be in urban areas. This means cities need to adapt to changing circumstances of the people who use buildings for work, commuting, or living. The built environment accounts for around 40% of global CO2 emissions (1), and around 50% of resources extracted globally are consumed by the construction sector (2).
Global megatrends such as urbanization and global warming create a pressing need to take action in many parts of the world. For example, around 85–95% of existing European buildings will still be standing in 2050 (3), but only a quarter of these buildings are energy efficient. Furthermore, many governments have launched initiatives to renovate outdated buildings to meet efficiency and sustainability standards.
The solution
To answer these challenges, KONE developed the KONE Upgrade offering for updating customers’ elevators at their own pace with modular packages. This helps accelerate urban renewal and circularity. This so-called partial modernization approach involves replacing outdated parts of elevators and escalator systems, while retaining valid original components.
Modernization extends the building’s lifecycle and helps avoid the environmentally more damaging demolition. In many situations it is the most resource efficient way of keeping buildings up-to-date and accessible for everyone.
KONE’s offering can even equip buildings for a completely new use and user experience. KONE Upgrade modernization packages can include the electrification for the equipment to run fast, the hoisting to run more stable and with less energy, or also replacement of visible parts like the car interior or elevator call buttons. KONE can also add a brand-new elevator to an existing shaft, or to a building that previously did not have one.
The business model
The KONE Upgrade modernization offering represents a product life-extension business model, which keeps products in use longer by upgrading or changing only the outdated parts. This reduces material use, waste, and carbon emissions while lowering costs for customers. At the same time, life-extension business model creates recurring revenue for companies through service offerings and helps meet safety, efficiency, and user needs without full replacement.
KONE provides modernization solutions for all types of buildings, from the tallest skyscrapers and historic landmarks, to airports, shopping and office blocks, and to residential buildings. Thus, the KONE Upgrade offering provides a wide variety of options for flexibly improving the people flow of existing facilities, without compromising resource efficiency. This is an attractive value addition for customers that want to prioritize effective and circular mobility systems for their buildings, facilities and spaces. In addition, KONE continuously seeks to enhance circularity in their offering by reusing and reducing reliance on virgin materials.
The benefits for the customer
The KONE Upgrade offering is a flexible and resource efficient solution for customers to extend the effective use of their buildings, facilities and spaces. Other benefits include:
Modularity: KONE can recommend different upgrades and modifications that are relevant for them. For example, by upgrading the electrification it is possible to make the building smarter and more efficient. A hoisting upgrade helps improve performance, energy efficiency and safety. Upgrading the car and sling helps redesign the elevator, make it visually more appealing, and hence increase building value.
Added intelligence: Modernization brings an intelligent control system to all elevators and future proofs the building. Intelligence enables 24/7 connectivity, predictive maintenance and intelligent control based on the peak hours. Improved control on leveling also promotes end user safety.
Energy savings: By modernizing an elevator, customers can achieve energy savings of up to 70% (4). KONE modernization solutions range from retrofitting LED lights to a completely new elevator with energy regeneration technology. In a mid-rise building, KONE regenerative drives can recover up to 40% (5) of an elevator system’s total energy consumption for other uses. In taller buildings, the energy savings can be even bigger. KONE has solutions with the best A classification on energy efficiency.
Minimal disruptions: Customers can upgrade their equipment at their own pace with modular packages, meaning less downtime to people flow and lower one-off costs. The renovation project on the building is short when KONE is able to retain components, with installation times starting from 1 week. The more components are retained, the less there is additional renovation work, like painting on the stairway.
Fact sheet: KONE
Industry: Elevator and escalator manufacturing
Annual Sales: 11 B€
Founded: 1910
Employees: 60,000
How was the solution developed: Internal development
1: https://worldgbc.org/climate-action/embodied-carbon/
2: https://worldgbc.org/article/an-integrated-approach-to-a-sustainable-built-environment-the-co-benefits-of-resources-circularity/
3: https://www.kone.com/en/Images/KONE_Sustainability_Report_2021_tcm17-115554.pdf
4: https://www.kone.com/en/Images/KONE_Annual%20Review_2024_tcm17-134328.pdf
5: The data is based on third party validated regenerative ratios for roundtrips (in respective ISO 25745-2 certificates).