Energy efficiency in buildings in southern Europe: challenges and design strategies

Increasing attention paid to energy efficiency in buildings by researches has led toward solutions favoring the adaptation of European passive houses standard, developed and codified mainly in cold contexts, to different climate contexts, especially the Mediterranean one. In warm area, the energy efficiency is related to summer performances and passive cooling of buildings. In southern and central Italy the main factor is the heat control that regards just the summer period, during which situations of overheating – that imply relevant energy consumption due to conditioning systems - shall be limited. It is possible that the energy required to cool the buildings exceeds the requirements for heating. This implies that the criteria for energy efficiency projects should be revisited and adapted to specific national climatic situations, even recovering and updating design criteria and techniques adopted in traditional building. Significant experiences are developing even in Italy, where the Mediterranean climate has different characteristics compared to the cold climates of central and northern Europe. An interesting project is presented as indicative case study of experimentation in this field.