Numerical investigation of the Castle of Zena energy needs and a feasibility study for the implementation of electric and gas driven heat pump

The building sector is one of the key consumers of energy in Europe; consequently, European Unionhas enacted several directives dealing, directly and indirectly, with energy efficiency in building aimingto reduce the buildings energy use. Those directives, while dealing with existing buildings, do not takecare of the Architectural Heritage in a specific uniform way adopting the derogation regime: exceptionsare available at the national level to exclude from their application buildings listed in the ArchitecturalHeritage as historic buildings. Thus any country can adopt its own rules to include or exclude buildingsfrom respecting the energy efficiency requirements for existing buildings. Consequently, up to now nogeneral rules, codes and standards are available for energy retrofit of historical and architectural valuablebuildings. On the other side, no international act, in the field Architectural Heritage conservation, dealswith energy and energy retrofit. Furthermore, the European Union Treaty does not comprise the CulturalHeritage as matter of European legislation. Thus to cover this gap between historic/historical buildingand energy retrofit a lobbying action is needed, managed by the national Cultural Heritage authori-ties, which can steers EU policy in a more effective way towards energy retrofit of historic/historicalbuildings.