Analysis of energy consumption scenarios of the Italian residential building stock

Building stock energy models have been receiving increasing attention in the last years as powerful tools to forecast energy policies at national levels. This work contributes to the existing discussion on this topic by presenting a bottom-up physic-based model of the Italian residential stock that can calculate national energy consumption using data collected by ISTAT from a 2013 survey. Such a model exploits electric appliance data and dynamic building energy simulations to analyse the current state of Italian houses’ energy consumption, and by presenting possible scenarios for 2050. The analysis of the current state focuses on the energy vectors employed, primary energy, and validation with respect to external sources. Results show good accuracy with respect to national energy balance and with respect to regional data for heating and domestic hot water. The presented future scenarios are based on expected changes in climatic condition, technology replacement, and retrofits of buildings. Considering current renovation rates, envelope insulation and heat pump installation could produce a reduction of 12% of the final energy.