Residential and non-residential public buildings make up an important part of Italy's heritage with significant expenditure on energy supply and maintenance. In order to understand how to manage effective redevelopment and reduce the consumption of these assets, Eurac Research's energy efficiency experts have developed a software, called CERPlan (Cost Effective Renovation Plan), which simulates redevelopment scenarios for a building stock, determining the most suitable and cost-effective solutions.

Managing a large building stock from the energy point of view has its obvious problems: the information available is many and fragmented and it is difficult to link the different characteristics of the buildings to their respective energy consumption, which is why understanding where to renovate is decidedly complicated.

The software developed by Eurac Research, makes it possible to organise more clearly all the data necessary for correct planning of interventions and, above all, identifies where and when to intervene with a rapid economic return.

The tool, which features a user-friendly graphical interface, enables the user to easy understand how much each building consumes and, above all, which energy renovation measures are most cost-effective to implement with a limited budget. In fact, the programme takes into account both the interventions to be planned and the extraordinary maintenance needs of the buildings. If, for example, the roof of a school will soon require maintenance, it will be more economical to combine this intervention with the installation of photovoltaic panels and insulation of the envelope.

For each hypothesised intervention, the benefits in terms of reduced consumption and CO2 emissions, cost and return on investment can be calculated. Thanks to this system, it is easier to plan in the long term the interventions to be carried out to reduce the consumption of these buildings with a final economic return.