Planning energy saving measures for existing buildings through linear problems solving

Italian residential buildings stock is quite old. Nearly the 83% of it was built before 1981. At the same time the renovation rate of dwellings is very low. High consumption of residential buildings is one of the most important factors of poor energy performances of urban areas. A countertrend is not possible if suitable planning instruments are adopted not only for new buildings but also for existing ones retrofits. In this paper the authors propose the application of a linear problem solving technique to energy savings measures planning for existing dwellings. As the case study on national subsidies policy highlights, the improvement margins are great if an optimized model replaces the actual program which is only private initiative based. The proposed model is highly flexible and can be applied, after carrying out a specific context assessment and choosing appropriate constraints, not only to a national but even local scale.