Decision analysis for the optimization of buildings energy retrofit. Simplex algorithm

Italy owns a huge amount of residential buildings. Many of these have high energy consumptions. For this reason the Ministry for Economic Development finances a program of fiscal incentives for the retrofit of the buildings, known as "Energy Efficiency 55% ". The first part of the job here presented introduces a statistic analysis of actual energy consumptions of existing buildings in different climatic zones and diversified for constructive type. The study shows that the savings reachable through the improvement of new dwellings are not as effective as the potential savings of an intervention on the existing heritage. The second part proposes the application of the operations research’s simplex algorithm to the results of the program "55%". The data are studied with the goal to point out the best processes of retrofit for three different geographical areas, depending on the intervention’s costs of realization, on the reduction of CO2 emissions and on primary energy savings. The final results compare the actual trend of “55%” program’s energy savings to the ones reachable with an optimization worked out through the simplex algorithm. This example could give an impulse to a best planning of the government intervention toward strategies of energy retrofit suitable to the single local realities.