BARRIERS TO ENERGY EFFICIENCY IN ITALIAN MULTI FAMILY RESIDENTIAL SECTOR: ANALYSIS AND POLICY PROPOSALS

Existing buildings require over 40% of the world’s total final energy consumption, and account for 24% of world CO2 emissions. One third of the total final energy consumption in Italy is due to the building sector (residential and tertiary). Stricter standard have been approved for the new buildings, in the framework of the Energy performance of building Directive 2002/91/CE. Since energy policy in Italy is under the responsibility of regional governments, standard may vary depending on the region. In Italy a total of 930 thousand multi family buildings host around 9.3 million families, 23 million people, around 40% of the total population. The adoption of energy efficient measures during building refurbishments can be one of the most important action in order to achieve the 20-20-20 by 2020 objectives in the European Union. WWF Italy has therefore decided to support a study of the barriers to energy efficiency in the multi family sector as a part of the Generazione Clima campaign. This paper highlights the most relevant results of the project.