Energy efficiency improvement strategies for important historic buildings used as offices. A case study in Rome

Studio Santi is proud to announce that the conference proceedings of the 6th AIEE Energy Symposium “Current and Future Challenges to Energy Security” (14-16 December 2021) has been published here.

Alessandro Pelliccia, Valerio di Prospero, Laura Denisa Antonuzzi, Annalisa Zuppa, Francesco Castellani, Romano Acri and Federico Santi (Studio Santi and Sapienza University of Rome, DIAEE) presented the work “Energy efficiency improvement strategies for important historic buildings used as offices. A case study in Rome” available here.

The buildings sector accounts for almost a third of global final energy use. This sector covers a lot of energy-consuming activities that provide basic energy services such as lighting, heating, cooling, etc.

In Italy in 2018 the building sector accounted for almost 43,5% of the total energy consumption. It is clear how this sector will play a key role in reducing GHG emissions going forward. A high number of buildings, due to their early construction and their architectonic value, are considered “historic”, and only actions that don’t compromise the architectural values of these buildings can be proposed and realized.

This research discuss a case study of an historic building located in the center of Rome, the headquarter of an important international agency. This study demonstrates that it is possible to reduce of almost 30% both primary energy consumption and GHG emission of the building through a combination of interventions such as Building Integrated PhotoVoltaic (BIPV), electrification of heating systems with heat pumps, new efficient windows, technical improvements (inverters, new UPS), Building Automation and Contro System (BACS) and efficient lighting while respecting the architectural value of the historic building.