Large scale energy analysis and renovation strategies for social housing in the historic city of Venice

• Published in: Sustainable energy technologies and assessments Vol. 52; p. 102041
• Main Authors: Teso, Lorenzo, Carnieletto, Laura, Sun, Kaiyu, Zhang, Wanni, Gasparella, Andrea, Romagnoni, Piercarlo, Zarrella, Angelo, Hong, Tianzhen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Ltd 01.08.2022; Elsevier
• Subjects: CityBES; ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION; Large scale retrofit analysis; Social housing; Urban building energy modeling; Venice; Social housing; Urban building energy modeling; CityBES; Large scale retrofit analysis; Venice
• ISSN: 2213-1388
• DOI: 10.1016/j.seta.2022.102041

•The work is the first application of CityBES tool to an Italian historic district.•Urban building simulations were performed despite the difficulty of obtaining data.•The buildings’ dataset is a low-income housing district in Venice constructed immediately after WWI.•Four actions are applied achieving high energy savings and emission reduction.•The methodology is replicable in other historic district-level retrofit. Social houses built after the Second World War to accommodate workers and low-income families represent one of the major energy consumers and greenhouse gas emitters in the residential sector. Plans for their renovation are underway in all European countries, and the process is more complicated for Italian cities due to the lack of space and the large number of historical buildings. This study addresses this challenge by proposing a methodology to renovate a low-income district in the city of Venice using CityBES to model and evaluate energy conservation measures. CityBES is a web-based tool that allows users to employ urban building energy modeling for large-scale energy and retrofit analyses of building stocks. In the case study conducted for Venice’s Santa Marta district, due to the particular context, four common energy conservation measures covering both the building envelope and heat generation boilers have been applied. The evaluation of energy-saving performances at the district level showed that the four measures together achieved 67% energy savings, an abatement in energy cost equal to 67%, and annual carbon dioxide emissions reduction of 1.1 MtCO2. The case study demonstrates a method and workflow replicable for energy retrofit analysis of building stocks in other historical districts.