Preliminary Energy Audit of the Historical Building of the School of Engineering and Architecture of Bologna

Energy efficiency has become a common target for every building: the European Directive 2010/31 provides that by 2020 every new building must consume very little fossil energy (Nearly Zero Energy Building) and from 2018 also public buildings will have to meet this requirement. Although the objectives imposed by the new legislative references are very clear, modify the existing heritage in many cases is not easy. For example, many buildings, including public ones, in addition to consuming a lot of energy, are also constrained by the Superintendence for Architectural, Landscape, Historical and Artistic Assets; therefore it becomes difficult to improve their energy performance. This paper presents a preliminary energy audit of the historical building of the School of Engineering and Architecture in Bologna (Italy). It was built in the 30s, is one of several public buildings of particular historical and architectural interest for the city of Bologna and it is constrained architecturally. Special attention has been focused on the energy consumption for heating during the winter season. The audit was carried out taking into account the European standard EN 15603, using the method of energy signature based on actual consumption. The results of the energy analysis show an energy saving of about 15% with operations building management and over 30% with improvements of the heating system and the windows.