Abstract

These guidelines provide information to evaluate and improve the energy performance of historic buildings, fully respecting their significance as well as their cultural heritage and aesthetic qualities. The guidelines are intended for both design engineers and government agencies. They provide design engineers with a tool for energy auditing the historic building and offer a framework for the design of possible energy upgrades, which are conceptually similar to those provided for non-protected buildings, but appropriately tailored to the needs and peculiarities of cultural heritage. These guidelines also provide the institutions responsible for protecting the building, the opportunity to objectively decide on the level of energy efficiency achieved as a result of the rehabilitation in accordance with the conservation criteria. These guidelines are therefore both a point of arrival (if a unification of languages among different regulations can be reached), but above all they serve as a starting point and a stimulus for further advances and progress in a sector that will be of fundamental importance to the development of our future society.