• Energy Research

The issue of compatibility between buildings and environment is becoming primarily important. New buildings must comply with indications and rules concerning specific environmental requirements that are focused on the improvement of the quality of the building context and the quality of the areas used by occupants. ITC-CNR, the Construction Technologies Institute of the National Research Council, is actively dealing, both at national and international level, with the buildings sustainability issue. At national level the institute in involved in projects focused on the development of buildings sustainability certification systems based on Protocollo ITACA and SBTool Italia. At international level, ITC-CNR is involved in the working groups of SBAlliance, an international organization providing mutual recognition of the systems for the certification of the environmental sustainability of buildings. This paper presents the activities conducted by ITC-CNR at national level, in particular those related to the application of Protocollo ITACA. Protocollo ITACA is the evaluation system of the buildings sustainability adopted by the Conference of Italian Regions for the certification of the environmental sustainability of residential buildings. This system can be applied to several regional contexts and to different intended uses keeping the main structure of the protocol unchanged and with no alteration of the evaluation methodology based on the SBMethod. Protocollo ITACA can be applied starting from the initial design phases up to the end of construction of the building and it is based on the use of quantitative environmental sustainability indicators that are recognized at regulatory and legislative level. The methodological approach used in Protocollo ITACA encourages designers to optimize the building construction process in order to improve the quality of the building through architectural and technological strategies that reduce the impact on the environment.

The enhancement of energy performance of buildings has become a pillar of energy policies. The main target is the cut of energy consumption to reduce buildings footprint. This aim is pursued by introducing constrains on building requirements in terms of properties of basic materials and components and exploitation of renewable energy sources. That results in the definition of the zero-energy building (ZEB) concept. The new paradigm introduced new challenges and, at the same time, involved all the different stakeholders in facing the barriers to the diffusion of the novel solutions proposed by the research development. This paper summarizes the actual state-of-art of whole performance of ZEBs and the related technical solutions, analysing their increasing potential in energy consumption. A collection of the different case studies reported in literature involving ZEBs is presented, compiling an analysis of the performance of the common solutions actually applied. The technologies involved are described discussing their impact in meeting the ZEB requirements. A debate is proposed, pointing out the main aspects deserving further investigations and outlining the critical elements in making the zero-energy target the new standard for the buildings.

The energy retrofit of social housing buildings in Italy is a big challenge, for their poor energy performance and their large diffusion, but it is affected by several problems mainly due to lack of funds. Therefore, a solid methodological base to achieve optimal energy levels, considering the best balance with the costs, can be useful for a cheaper approach to their energy performance improvement. The cost optimal methodology indicated by the European Directive 2010/31/UE is here applied on a social housing building, located in the northern Italy, in order to demonstrate how it can be used as a supporting decision tool for refurbishment interventions on existing residential buildings, when limited investments from Public Authorities or privates are involved. A series of energy efficiency measures are defined in order to identify different improvement scenarios, related both to the envelope and to the technical systems. After a first step calculating the primary energy consumption and the Global Cost in accordance with the EN 15459:2007, the best costs/benefits ratio is evaluated among all the hypothesized scenarios. The results of the research are expected to be a stimulus for the definition of specific refurbishment plans for the energy efficiency increase of social housing.

The article describes the analysis of the environmental impact of a Building Integrated PhotoVoltaics (BIPV) module developed within the research project "BIPV-Building Integrated Photovoltaics, Piastrelle ceramiche fotovoltaiche per involucri edilizi sostenibili".The aim of the project is the development and the implementation of photovoltaic BIPV ceramic modules to be used in buildings for the construction of active envelopes.In particular, one of the research lines of the project involves the construction of BIPV ceramic modules by depositing a thin film of amorphous silicon on a ceramic support.Research and development activities previously carried out by the Ceramic Centre of Bologna in collaboration with other companies have led to the production of prototype of a ceramic photovoltaic module. The project aims to the optimization and the industrialization of the module.Other BIPV modules (for example made on glass sheets) have been used in the construction industry for over 20years as an integral part of the building, in both horizontal (roofs and skylights) and vertical components (facades).The use of these modules allows the realization of active technical elements, reducing the use of raw materials.The environmental impact assessment of the BIPV ceramic module was conducted through the life-cycle approach, in accordance with the international standards of the ISO 14040 series, in order to define the eco-profile, identifying the processes with the greatest impacts and suggesting improvements.The environmental profile thus obtained was then compared with that of other photovoltaic modules, in order to assess the environmental performance compared to existing technologies. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd.

The article describes the results of the "Open-source Smart lamp" aimed at designing and developing a smart appliance that integrates a wireless communication system for building automation, following the maker movement philosophy. The device is able to get an overview of the potential of a nearable device equipped with a variety of sensors to broadcast digital data for the management and control of the Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) of the built environment. The Smart Lamp installed in a real office in order to test the reliability of the device in the management of the lighting and air quality levels.

Since its introduction in 2010, the nearly Zero Energy Building (nZEB) concept has known a large diffusion in European countries. Albania, an aspiring candidate country to join the European Union EU, is paving the way towards its introduction by transposing EU directives in the fields of energy efficiency into the national legislation. Most of the national building stock includes buildings with low thermal and energy performance but with high refurbishment potential, too. The country can become an important contributor in the EU decarbonization strategy due to the high percentage of electricity produced by hydropower stations, making it one of the least carbon-intensity countries in the electricity production point of view. The article focuses on the evaluation of the energy performance of an existing school located in Tirana and the potentialities to reach the nZEB target, analysing both the suitable technological solutions and the energy market situation. The Primary Energy Factors PEF for the local electricity market are estimated referring to statistical data and in comparison, with neighbouring countries, Italy and Greece, in order to investigate the potential of the achievement of the nZEB target in Albania.

Building sector is responsible for approximately 40% of energy consumption and 36% of CO2 emissions in the EU. For more than a decade the Energy Performance Certification (EPC) revealed to be an effective tool to create demand for energy efficiency in buildings providing recommendations for the cost-effective upgrading of the energy performance. The EPC process is founded on a standard calculation, based on conventional climate, use, surroundings and occupant-related input data, as defined by the Technical Standard EN 15603:2008. Even if the EPC is substantially mandatory in the European Countries, differences can be found along the process in particular in terms of methodology and tools. In Italy the national regulation provides simplified methodologies that can generate results assuring a maximum deviation between + 20% and - 5% of the final non-renewable primary energy compared to the same parameters determined with the application of the national reference tool. The aim of the present article is to describe the salient features of the methodology and the technical choices necessary to guarantee the range of acceptability of the results. A case study tested the procedure and the results were compared to those of an extended calculation procedure.

The paper presents a new system of indicators for assessing urban sustainability that can be embodied in a simple decision support system (DSS). The development of this system is based on a multidisciplinary approach in which previous experiences in producing decision and rating tools for sustainable building policies are merged with the analytical tools of environmental economics and urban economics. The main objective of this tool is to contribute to policy making in the framework of European strategies on urban sustainability. The hierarchical structure is organized into three levels: the first level is represented by thematic areas: (i) Environment; (ii) Urban Structure; (iii) Economy & Society, and (iv) Institutions. Each area includes categories and each category is made up of a set of indicators. The selection process and development of indicators are based on their relevance for sustainability analysis and the information they can provide to the policy makers. The metrics of the indicators are based on benchmarking in relation to performance of a set of cities representative of the Italian context. A baseline weighting of indicators is proposed by authors. The full version tool can be applied to the city as a whole. A reduced version, which can be applied to an urban sub-area (e.g. neighborhood or district), is also developed. An empirical application is carried out for the city of Milan, Italy.