Climate Change and Building Renovation: Effects on Energy Consumption and Internal Comfort in a Social Housing Building in Northern Italy

Manzan Marco (), Atlas Ramezani, Alex Buoite Stella and Amedeo Pezzi
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Manzan Marco: Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Trieste, 34127 Trieste, Italy
Atlas Ramezani: Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Trieste, 34127 Trieste, Italy
Alex Buoite Stella: Department of Medicine, Surgery and Health Sciences, University of Trieste, 34149 Trieste, Italy
Amedeo Pezzi: Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Trieste, 34127 Trieste, Italy

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 7, 1-14

Abstract: Climate change is becoming a crucial factor to consider within human activities and the building sector is particularly influenced by aspects of internal comfort and energy. In Italy, great attention has been paid to the energy refurbishment of buildings. However, such interventions are mostly focused on reducing heating energy consumption, thus neglecting summer season performance. Moreover, climate change is barely considered during the design phase. This issue is addressed in this work which analyzes some of the most common refurbishment interventions applied to a social housing building in Trieste, while also considering internal comfort during the summer season. A dynamic analysis of the building-plant system is carried out using EnergyPlus. Fanger, UTCI and the adaptive comfort models were used to represent internal health, while three TRY data sets were generated using two GCM–RCM projections to evaluate the influence of climate change. The results show that both building insulation and climatic change affect heating consumption reaching a 70% reduction. However, building insulation does not greatly affect internal comfort, although different models show different behavior to protect against external temperatures. On the contrary, climatic change influences the percentage of hours of discomfort, with a 20% increase for all of the models. The final consideration is that people’s internal health should always be considered when carrying out refurbishment activities.

Keywords: climatic data; consumption reduction; indoor health; numerical simulation; health models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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