An integrated approach for the evaluation of energy performances and environmental impact of buildings.

Following the goals established by Horizon2020 EU is working on strategies in order to increase the energy efficiency of buildings. A useful solution is to identify the energy performance of buildings through the energy certification as it provides information for the comparison of buildings with different architectural typology, shape, design technology and geographical location. Anyway this tool does not assess the real energy consumption of the building and does not take into account its impact on the environment. In this work two different types of analysis were carried out: one based only on the energy efficiency (which evaluates mainly the winter season) and the other one based on the environmental impact (which considers also summer consumption and disposal of building materials). Those studies were applied on a standard building with the purpose to obtain cross related information. In order to have a greater applicability of results the same project was set in three different Italian locations, which are characterized by different climatesand the building was considered composed by fixed and variable parameters. After the evaluation of the results, interventions on variable parameters have been identified in order to improve the energy behavior of the building with an acceptable impact on the environment. The aim of this paper is to propose a methodology which integrates the energy certification of buildings with the environmental impact, leading to a more conscious choice of retrofit interventions and reaching a compromise between energy performances and environment al impact.