Do you wish to
save energy (and money) and pollute less? Start with your own home!
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Most buildings
in Italy are old, and this is certainly not good as far as energy saving is
concerned. Old buildings, indeed, might have frames, doors and windows that
cannot but make heat loss easier, which results in an increase of energy consumption
to warm up and cool rooms. Moreover, in many cases not only buildings, but also
household appliances are old: fridges that consume much more than the newest
ones, obsolete heating equipments…all this makes pollution, as well as costs
and bills, increase.
Renewing and
building following new “rules” has become the moral imperative of these days,
an evidence of this being given by the laws governing the matter. Some years
ago the obligation of submitting to municipalities an energy performance certificate
of both newly built and existing buildings have entered into force in Italy.
The decree 192 of 2005, moreover, which was issued following an EU directive,
has provided very severe laws as far as energy saving is concerned, and has
introduced energy performance certificates in Italy, not only for household
appliances, but also for houses and buildings. This means that buildings have
to be classified, according to precise standards, in different energy
efficiency classes, from class A (the best one) to class G. Class A buildings
produce less than 30 Kwh/mq a year, class B 31 to 50 Kwh/mq a year, class C 51
to 70 Kwh/mq a year, class D 71 to 90, class E 91 to 120, class F 121 to 160,
class G over 160 Kwh/mq a year. The energy performance certificates of buildings
are made checking the building insulation and the quality of energy-efficiency
installations; on the energy class of the building depends also its value on
the market. Heating, in particular, is one of the factors that most affect
household costs: it is estimated that 53% of the costs of a building comes from
that. Thus living in an energy efficient house or apartment also means saving a
lot of money. The search for new materials to reduce heat loss goes on, as well
as the search for new heating plants and insulation techniques.
However, Italy
is certainly not alone in this environmental challenge: after the Copenhagen
summit, both the States and other European countries have set important objectives.
While Obama promised that in 20 years time all the building in the States will
be eco-friendly, the goal of the European Union is having exclusively
zero-emission buildings before 2020. These objectives are certainly ambitious,
but possible to reach, as evidenced also by the cases of cities like Stockholm
and Hamburg, which have succeeded in drastically reducing CO2 emissions. And
the situation of our cities definitely does not allow us to postpone the matter
again.
