Deep and Fast Retrofitting of Existing Buildings to Improve Energy Performance and Comfort Conditions

Dear Colleagues,

According to the International Energy Agency, the buildings and buildings construction sectors combined are responsible for over the 33% of global final energy consumption and nearly 40% of total CO2 emissions. In developing countries, energy demand from buildings and buildings construction is rising, driven by improved access to energy and rapid growth in global buildings’ floor areas. It is, therefore, crucial to promote the construction of new efficient buildings. In developed countries, on the other hand, the growth of buildings stock is very slow and its renovation rate very low. The combination of both conditions brings to a very aged stock with a very poor energy performance. This is the reason why the European Commission has recently published a strategic document called Renovation Wave. The goal is increasing the yearly renovation rate of the stock by up to 3%, promoting those deep renovations able to reduce the building energy consumption by at least 60%.

In order to do so, some key issues are implemented in the strategy. Energy efficiency is crucial: buildings will have to consume only the energy they really need. Retrofit interventions will have to be affordable and economically convenient. Electrical heating and cooling system feed by renewables will have to be widely promoted. Materials and technologies adopted to carry out renovations will have to contribute to minimize buildings footprint. Renovation strategies will have to be targeted to improve comfort conditions and internal air quality of indoor spaces. Green buildings transition will have to be coupled with the digital one, both in terms of design and management processes (building information modelling) and performance monitoring and controlling (smart buildings and energy distribution systems). Finally, renovations will have to respect design, craftsmanship, heritage and public space conservation principles.

In this frame, this Special Issue welcomes articles that present innovative approaches on building renovation in line with the Renovation Wave. In particular, it aims to collect and illustrate practices and models of retrofit interventions of high architectural quality, able to achieve NZEB target and to improve comfort conditions within existing buildings. They will have to be implemented by the use of digital technologies such as building information modelling and smart systems and/or propose standard industrialized solutions.

Prof. Roberto Ricciu
Prof. Giuseppe Desogus
Dr. Arianna Murru
Prof. Emanuela Quaquero
Dr. Luigi Antonio Besalduch
Guest Editors

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• thermal comfort
• buildings energy efficiency
• buildings retrofit
• renewable integration
• applied environmental thermodynamics
• energy efficiency
• energy saving
• building materials
• material characterization
• heritage conservation
• building information modelling
• asset information model