Are the Best Available Technologies the only viable for energy interventions in historical buildings?

Abstract

Worth aged buildings represent among the existing buildings a special case when it comes to their energy refurbishment. Current available technologies for building components, characterized by high level of thermal performances, unfortunately, are also characterized, not rarely, by limited compatibility with the architectural integrity of the building. In other words, the so-called Best Available Technologies that are effectively adopted to optimize the energy performances of buildings, in the case of aged buildings to which a certain artistic, historic and/or architectural merit is recognized (heritage houses) could, actually, determine such kind of conflicts and therefore leading to the selection of “noninvasive” but less performing building and plant elements. To check the effectiveness of these less performing technologies, we investigated the energy performance of two different refurbishment configurations of the building envelope of a heritage house: a “best available technology” scenario, in which interventions assumed consist of using the best available technology for energy saving; and an “allowed best technology” scenario, in which interventions assumed consist of using technologies that, although not the best available, are anyway “allowable” according to the cultural heritage preservation requisites and rules. A cost-based comparison between these configurations of the building envelope was also carried out.Results of this comparative analysis are reported in this paper.