Sustainable Communities and energy poverty. The role of building performance to ensure affordable comfort conditions

Huge efforts have been spent during the last decade to strongly reduce energy demand in the building sector. However, the related implications due to Climate Change issue represents a very relevant challenge not only in terms of emission trends and environmental impacts but also of quality of life in the built environment (and not only). The attention given to the topic in the last years opened the discussion to a broader vision including the possible social impacts according to the possible future scenarios. Within this general context, the development of sustainable communities - assumed as communities able to act for lowering their impacts on climate, energy demand and related issues - is to be considered a priority. Despite the number of actions promoted to foster the process, a very critical phenomenon called energy poverty - typically connected with very poor people in developing countries - still involves a limited, but relevant, number of low-income people in developed countries cities living in an energy poverty status. This paper reports a study on the role of buildings and cities quality in influencing the energy poverty condition while, possibly, addressing solutions to support sustainable communities development able to effectively contrast this phenomenon.