Historical buildings’ energy conservation potentialities: A methodology focused on building operation

Today, about 30 per cent of European existing buildings can be entitled as “historical buildings”. Nowadays, their energy retrofit is important to reach the ambitious European CO₂ emissions’ reduction objectives. The purpose of this paper is to outline a methodology to investigate the potential energy savings and the enhancement of historical buildings’ liveability by acting only on their operation, so that the building fabric could be maintained as much as possible as the original evidence.

The paper describes the framework’s theoretical phases and their application in two real case studies. The methodology was conceived with a pre-test and post-test design approach.

The research demonstrated that the elaborated methodology is flexible and allows the adoption of different energy retrofit strategies for the different cases.

Limitations arise out of the circumstance that the methodology is based on occupants and technicians willingness to engage in the strategies, so it is not possible to quantify its efficacy ex ante.

Practical implications can be found in the way of addressing energy retrofit strategies through a user-centric approach with minimum impact on the building itself.

At the same time, the methodology has a strong social aspect with its potential to change people’s attitudes towards energy usage and behaviour.

This study not only represents the first attempt of applying a systematic energy retrofit strategy based on occupants and technicians behavioural change in historic buildings, but also is one of the first studies dedicated to occupants’ comfort and behaviour assessment in this context.