Energy Efficiency and Retrofit of Historic Buildings

Dear Colleagues,

The historic building stock represents one of the greatest sources of wealth for humanity among the cultural heritage panorama; for this reason, countries around the world have made efforts to preserve their national treasures and protect them from natural deterioration over the years.

However, it must be noted that among the existing building stock, historic buildings represent a consistent part of this sector and, due to the needs of value preservation, some aspects are not properly taken into account, with energy saving prominent among them.

From our point of view, the strategies which are able to achieve global reduction of GHG emissions, reduction of primary energy consumption, transition towards net Zero Energy Buildings, RES exploitation, and, generally, building sustainability goals must include historic centers and buildings.

Common experience shows that the existing building stock appears to be very energy-inefficient, with the exception of few sample cases; in this framework, the historic building stock represents a relevant part of this sector due to its high primary energy consumption. In detail, it seems difficult to apply energy retrofit actions due to standards and regulations or use of these buildings, because they are more focused on preservation, restoration or reconstruction than on energy saving or people’s comfort improvement. At present, therefore, this represents a hard challenge for all those involved, including researchers and scientists.

In recent years, several studies have analyzed the best refurbishment measures applicable to public or private historic building–plant systems and the results have confirmed several issues, i.e., inefficient energy policies , incorrect energy use, and expensive energy bills.

Energy efficiency in historic buildings is intrinsically a multidisciplinary issue. Indeed, it involves different disciplines, such as material science, heat capacity measures, thermal insulation, heating and cooling energy demand, thermal energy storage, heating loads, distributed energy generation, HVAC system design, economic feasibility, proper procedures, certification and protocols improvement, and so on.

Hence, the researcher community involved is extremely wide, ranging from technicians to architects to historians to art scholars, and cooperation between people of such different specialties may be challenging, and mutual constraints are to be expected.

In order to enhance cooperation among different research fields, the first step is to provide them with a common language and to make everyone aware of everyone else’s needs. This Special Issue is an attempt to create a common ground where all professionals involved can meet, and where each has the opportunity to express their own demands and to learn those of others. This will in turn—we hope—improve mutual understanding and eventually make energy efficiency in historic buildings a reality coexisting with preservation and history. 

Topics:

• Historic building retrofit energy measures
• Material science
• Building heat capacity
• Thermal insulation in refurbishment
• Heating and cooling energy demand
• Thermal energy storage
• Distributed energy generation in historic centers
• HVAC system design
• Energy and economic feasibility
• Procedures, certification, and protocols
• Historic building database
• Historic building use
• Occupant behavior and people comfort
• Indoor intelligent control strategies
• Renewable energy sources and energy storage

Dr. Alessandra Galatioto
Guest Editor

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