Energy: ENEA issues report on national building stock

Italy has 12.4 million residential buildings^[1], of which over 60% built before 1976, the year in which the first law on energy saving was enacted^[2]; 1.7 million non-residential buildings (about 12% out of a total of 14 millions), mainly intended for production (19%), commerce (16%) and services (12%), as shown by the Report “The National Building Stock”, drawn up the ENEA Energy Efficiency Department in view of the actions necessary to meet the energy saving obligations set by the new EU directives.

Based on various sources^[3], the Report identifies approximately 770 thousand public real estate properties^[4], of which 670 thousand are not listed buildings and therefore potentially subject to the energy requalification requirements set out in the European directives.

The analysis of the Energy Performance Certificates (EPC), contained in the SIAPE - Information System on Energy Performance Certificates- highlights an improvement in the energy performance of certified buildings, with a percentage reduction in the least efficient energy classes (F - G) of over 4% in residential buildings and approximately 1.5% in non-residential buildings[5].

 “This Report is a necessary starting point for outlining the intervention and requalification and energy saving scenarios of the Italian building stock, in line with the new European standards”, explained one of the coordinators of the study, Nicolandrea Calabrese, head of the ENEA Laboratory of Energy Efficiency in Buildings and Urban Development.

With the Green Deal, presented in 2019, European countries are committed to acheiving climate neutrality by 2050 and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030. To achieve these targets, a legislative package known as Ready for 55% was presented in 2021, which includes the recast of the Renewable Energy Directive RED (EU Directive 2023/2413 of 18 October 2023), the Energy Efficiency Directive EED (EU Directive 2023/1791 of 13 September 2023) and the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive EPBD IV (EU Directive 2024/1275 of 24 April 2024).

 “Italy must get on track to meet the expected goals, considering that buildings in the EU represent 40% of final energy consumption and 36% of greenhouse gas emissions”, said Ilaria Bertini, Head of the ENEA Energy Efficiency Department. “Actually, today almost 75% of the EU building stock is energy inefficient.

For this reason, it becomes vital to determine the size of the Italian building stock for residential and tertiary use and investigate its average energy performance. To this aim, SIAPE could be a very useful tool for monitoring the improvement of the energy performance of buildings and addressing the extremely challenging goal of decarbonization by 2050”, concluded Bertini.