The research was developed for the Master thesis in collaboration with the Civil Engineer Department of the Aalborg University.
In the first part was presented the state of art of global situation about Zero Carbon Building and methodologies to evaluate retrofit project, the second and third parts deal with two district case studies, in Turin and Aalborg to evaluate and compare different retrofit alternatives.

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The increase in energy exploitation and air pollution have forced the European Union to deal with energy saving and CO2 emission reduction in all economic sectors.

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With specific reference to buildings, the recast of the European Directive EPBD (Energy Performance of Buildings Directive) has introduced the concept of nearly Zero Energy Building (nZEB) as building with very high energy performances and able to cover the residual energy demand with renewable energy sources installed on-site or nearby the building. According to EPBD recast, all new buildings will be nearly-zero by the end of 2020. Nevertheless, new 2050 targets, defined by COP 21 achievements, are related to emissions reduction. In fact, the recent European “Roadmap for moving to a competitive low-carbon economy in 2050” recommends a cut in the greenhouse emissions by 80% by 2050 (compared with 1990 levels) and, in particular, a 90% reduction in emissions generated by building sector. With this new perspective, the nZEB concept could be not sufficient for reaching the new goals and it is important to design and refurbish buildings as Post-Carbon Buildings (PCB). PCB is represented by a building where the minimum energy performance is in line with national standard requirements and a great reduction of carbon emissions is expected. However, it has been noted that focusing the attention only on buildings, considering each separately and analysing the problem at single house level, is not sufficient to reduce the CO2 emissions in the percentages established by COP 21 standards. For this reason, the EU has recommended to enlarge the content of the analysis promoting the concept of Post-Carbon City (PCC). PPC is defined as a city characterized by low-energy and low-emissions buildings provided with intelligent heating and cooling systems, electric and hybrid cars and better public transport.

 

Furthermore, when dealing with district scale and urban polices, it is also important including not only aspects strictly related to environmental impacts, but concerned social and economic sectors, such as the number of jobs created by the energy investments, the economic savings in energy bills, the people opinion upon different retrofit solutions, and so on.

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Following these considerations, the thesis aims at exploring the carbon reduction potential of an existing district and the use of Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) supporting the selection of energy retrofit strategies. In particular, the analysis is applied to two urban districts located in the city of Turin and in the city of Aalborg.

 

Starting from the existing buildings, energy efficiency minimum requirements and carbon reductions are combined for creating alternative strategies for the energy retrofit of the district. To do this, a dynamic simulation software (DesignBuilder) is used in order to obtain more precise results.  Then, those strategies are evaluated using the PROMETHEE method (Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluations) and a MCDA is applied. In particular, a family of environmental, social, technical and economic criteria has been defined with the aim of assessing the alternatives options and to select the best performing solution for the district under investigation.  Finally, results are compared studying the influence of local climates upon similar solution, in both Mediterranean and Nordic climate.

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Team: Martina Bertoncini | Adele Boggio