Energy Retrofit of Commercial Buildings: A Case Study on ERGO Building

It is well known that in developed countries the energy consumption of the building sector accounts for a 20–40% of the total energy consumption, therefore, improvement in building energy performance is considered an urgent commitment in order to reduce the energy import dependency and comply with the Kyoto Protocol. Commercial buildings are responsible for a significant share of the energy requirements of European Union countries. Related consumptions due to heating, cooling and lighting appear in most cases very high and expensive. Architectural renovation of existing buildings could provide an opportunity to enhance their energy efficiency through improvements in the envelopes and energy supply systems. In general there is a lack of well established methods for retrofitting but, if a case study reaches to effective results, the adopted strategies and methodologies can be successfully replicated for similar kind of buildings. In this paper an interesting example of office building energy retrofit is presented. The analysis and simulations of energy performance before and after the interventions, along with measured data on real energy performance, demonstrate the validity of the applied approach. The specifically developed design and refurbishment methodology, presented in this work, could be also assumed as a reference in similar operations. The analyzed case study is represented by the Italian headquarter of a major insurance company in northern Italy (Milan), which recently has been transformed in a high energy performance building. Recently, this project has been awarded in the international competition Zerofootprint Re-Skinning Awards, supported by UN-Habitat and U.S. Green Building Council, with a specific mention for replication of the retrofit methodology.