The European standards for energy efficiency in buildings: An analysis of the evolution with reference to a case study

The improvement of the energy efficiency of building stocks represents an important contribution for the reduction of the energy consumption in the European Union (EU), along with the decrease of greenhouse gases emissions. In this aim both the public administrations and the technical experts need reliable calculation methodology to assess buildings’ energy performance. In this framework, despite the recent publication of the Standard EN ISO 52016, that deeply modifies the approach to the energy building simulation by introducing a new hourly dynamic calculation model, the current normative framework (EN ISO 13790) will maintain its validity until the incorporation of the new Standard in the national Standards and Decrees (such as the Italian Standard UNI/TS 11300-1) will take place. The aim of this paper is comparing the suitability of the simulation approaches proposed by the above-cited Standards in relation to their different levels of complexity and to the levels of details of the results provided by them. On purpose, a case study in which the energy behaviour of a public building, sited in the Sicilian city of Trapani in the South of Italy, will be analysed and the results of the simulations conducted according to the aforementioned Standards will be compared considering the outcomes of the EnergyPlus software as reference values.