Decarbonizing Historical Buildings: Objectives and Constraints

The need to decarbonize the European construction sector clashes with a building stock in many cities dating back a few centuries, with variable energy performance. This raises the question of how much to focus on embodied carbon, the choice of materials, or operational carbon, hence energy efficiency. The Italian National Energy and Climate Change Plan proposes the progressive electrification of the building sector as the primary decarbonization measure, replacing heating systems with heat pumps. This prediction raises several questions. Non-monumental historic buildings are often subjected to landscape restrictions or present typological and decorative characteristics that do not allow insulation interventions, such as reducing energy consumption significantly and, therefore, related CO2 emissions. Furthermore, the need to replace and centralize the systems raises the problem of positioning the external units and heat distri-bution. The paper defines issues and opportunities through considerations and graphical schemes.