Appraisal of thermal premium in green building practice at urban scale. Methodological preview

Abstract

Research objective is to conceive, design and experiment a strategy at wide city scale to contribute facing the global ecological and energy crises of the Planet. This should be done through structural cut-down of fossil fuel consumption for settlements, i.e. by adopting the lowest cost energy: the not-consumed one! According to the Green Building Practices there are goals that can be achieved mainly through building passivation connected to: application of state-of-the-art sustainable technologies; alternative energy sources; diffusion of zero-mile decentralized solar energy production; fostering-up of solar feeding for summer air-conditioning, i.e. one of the most demanding energy consumers of the world. Owners, investors, contractors, occupants, tenants ask for more information and better quantification of energy saving magnitude in Green Buildings, as well as further appraisal of pay-back period i.e the length of time required for the return or re-payment of the additional larger initial investment. Research tries to conceive a methodology to assess in physical and monetary terms the energy saving and to define in financial terms the initial investment pay-back period at a reasonable rate. Proposed methodology has been tested in a first Case Study set-up at urban level and performed on a urban blocks of a Mediterranean medium size town including real world prototype yard, i.e. chantier, integrating passivation with the adoption of key frontier technologies such as sun chiller and solar cooling.