Fostering the ecological transition in a neighbourhood perspective:towards Positive Energy Districts’ application for a university case study

The European SET Plan Action 3.2 promotes and supports the planning, the deployment and replication of 100 Positive Energy Neighbourhoods by 2025, in connection with the work carried out by JPI Urban Europe Joint Programming Initiative; notwithstanding, after a careful analysis of Italian current energy policies and economic framework, it seems such an ambitious and virtuous target has not been encompassed yet by policy makers and public official regulations. Consequently, there is an urgent need for defining and adopting an integrated, innovative, incremental, and proper approach, able to experiment and normalise consistent and coherent plans and actions aimed at sustainability.The aim of the paper is to investigate, in this framework, how an Italian non-residential case-study could reach the target of PED, through a combined energy efficiency and renewable energy systems re-design assessment; its ultimate goal is therefore contributing to fill the already above highlighted gaps, while providing insights for the technical feasibility evaluation of meeting PED targets within an urban, non-residential university district context. This will allow for the identification of a benchmarking for PED performance assessment and potential for PED renovation in the Mediterranean area, also contributing to the overall target of supporting PED definition evaluation and development, as well as fostering PED performance schemes implementation. This work investigates an Italian university campus located in the city of Palermo (in the south of Italy): its most representative Department Buildings were selected and assessed in a Positive Energy District (PED) perspective; more in detail, the university buildings of interest (hereinafter referred to as “UniPa Campus” buildings) were modelled and simulated in non-steady state conditions in the Energy Plus environment, according to specific boundary conditions, representative energy profiles, typical occupancy rate and overall performances. A calibration procedure was performed to align the energy performances of the modelled district area to the existing neighbourhood selected and then, with reference to the calibrated models, renovation solutions and renewable energy systems were assessed in order to check the feasibility of achieving the level of PED.The results obtained through this study show that a significant reduction in primary energy demand can be achieved (by implementing a set of effective retrofit measures for opaque and transparent envelopes, lighting systems, electric equipment, and appliances); notwithstanding, the resulting annual energy demand (even though reduced of around 40% for the retrofitted district’s configuration) cannot be entirely covered by rooftop PV panels installation, therefore paving the way toward further solutions (such as implementing larger PV areas, defining more effective actions, and applying additional energy efficient retrofit measures), able to finally meet PED targets.