Energy retrofit of historic and existing buildings. The legislative and regulatory point of view.

The building sector is one of the key consumers of energy in Europe; consequently, European Union has enacted several directives dealing, directly and indirectly, with energy efficiency in building aiming to reduce the buildings energy use. Those directives, while dealing …

Moisture in buildings: an integrated approach to risk assessment and guidance.

There's a growing understanding that traditional moisture risk approaches are inadequate. This is because of changes to how buildings are constructed and used, and a greater understanding of why moisture causes buildings to fail. This Paper: Describes why the approach …

Energy efficiency and thermal comfort in historic buildings: A review.

In recent years, energy efficiency and thermal comfort in historic buildings have become high-interest topics among scholars. Research has demonstrated that retrofitting buildings to current energy efficiency and thermal comfort standards is essential for improving sustainability and energy performance and …

Post-occupancy evaluation of a historic primary school in Spain: Comparing PMV, TSV and PD for teachers’ and pupils’ thermal comfort.

With attention increasingly shifting toward adaptation and energy upgrade of existing and historic buildings, research on Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) has grown notably in recent years. School buildings are a significant asset to the European building stock and an important field …

Environmental policies for GHG emissions reduction and energy transition in the medieval historic centre of Siena (Italy): the role of solar energy.

The cities are playing a leading role in action to reduce the global CO2 emissions. In this paper a greenhouse gas (GHG) balance of the medieval historic centre of Siena (Tuscany, Italy) has been performed for the first time. It …

The energy performance improvement of historic buildings and their environmental sustainability assessment. 

The changes in present world oblige the scientific community working on Cultural Heritage to face every day more urgent challenges of “sustainability”. This concept refers to a very broad horizon, touching various spheres: cultural, economic, social, environmental, before the purely …

The Impact of the Energy Performance Improvement of Historic Buildings on the Environmental Sustainability. 

Energy restoration and retrofitting. Rethinking restoration projects by means of a reversibility/sustainability assessment. 

The Challenge of Energy Efficiency in Kiruna’s Heritage Buildings. 

The town of Kiruna, founded in 1900 in the northernmost part of Sweden, is nowadays in the middle of an impressive urban transformation: due to the impacts of mining activities a large part of the city center has to be …

Energy Efficient Retrofit of a Protected Building of Historical Significance

In the UK, historically or architecturally significant buildings that are of special interest are protected by the English Heritage that makes every effort to preserve them. There are over 370,000 listed buildings in the country, and over 92% of them …