Assessing the Energy Saving Potential of Historical Buildings Heritage in Mediterranean Climate

The ambitious European targets for decarbonizing the building sector by 2050 find their most complex application in the energy retrofitting of the existing historical building heritage. If conservative restoration requires low-impact measures on envelope and on plant-systems, the new building use and the updating of the thermal and energy requirements in line with the new regulations entail the need to guarantee a capillary and modern plant engineering operational safety, precise control of the indoor environmental conditions and flexibility. The significant presence of historic buildings in Italy, together with the strong orientation towards the rehabilitation of the existing building stock, as expressed in the latest draft of the EPDB recast, highlight the urgent need for useful guidelines for designers to intervene effectively in this type of buildings. Effective design and implementation of Building Automation and Control Systems (BACS) in historical building is becoming increasingly widespread to reduce energy consumption, while enhancing comfort. To support design and planning efforts, it is essential to quantify the potential impact of BACS, particularly their ability to lower a building’s operational energy demand. This paper evaluates through an energy audit the real energy saving potential of the implementation of BACS in an energy upgraded historical building in southern Italy. The selected case study is the Administrative Services Pavilion of the Bari General Hospital. Based on a validated building energy model, further energy upgrades of the building, despite existing constraints, are evaluated in terms of energy savings and cost-effectiveness.