Analysis and definition of a ZEB building at optimum level of efficiency and costs

The urban regeneration actions arise by the growing importance of information and communication technologies, moving to sustainable solutions, energy saving and security. New energy planning tools are adopted suggesting the legislator towards large-scale energy policies, by setting up all the information related to the building fabric whose representativeness can be defined through Reference Buildings. The aim of this study is the definition of a suitable methodology based on an energetic and economic approach able to detect refurbishment scenarios of existing buildings, in compliance with the ZEB requirements. For this purpose two residential reference buildings, located in Milan and Reggio Calabria representative of different climatic conditions, are defined aimed at analyzing the energy saving and the CO2 reduction of a series of refurbishment scenarios. Ten energy improvement packages, related both to the envelope and to the technical systems, are considered for the achievement of NZEB and ZEB target. Among these technologies, the best solutions are selected from an energy and economic point of view. Finally, the results are applied to the Italian buildings stock with the same characteristics of the reference building, through a simplified bottom-up approach.