LCC Analysis to evaluate the economic sustainability of technological scenarios on the district scale. - LCC Analysis per valutare la sostenibilità economica di scenari tecnologici alla scala del district

The analysis of the alternative project technologies shapes up as a crucial passage to verify the economic-environmental sustainability and thereby steer the choices of Public Administrations and private investors on investing in the retrofit of assets towards Energy-Efficient Buildings. When it comes, however, to new construction or energy retrofit interventions on existing buildings or clusters of buildings, you cannot overlook to place them territorially within a broader inftrastructural vision. In the essay, we suggest to apply the Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) approach to assess the economic sustainability of optional technological scenarios. Assuming the methodological principles of the LCCA approach, amply explored on the building scale, we try to reason on the district scale, tackling the complexity that this broader scale perspective entails. At the same time, we suggest application of the LCCA approach to a case already targeted by a previous retrofit intervention: a “post retrofit intervention” viewed within a differently mature technological and market context. We propose the simulation on a real case clarified by the “Concerto AL Piano” European project, developed as part of the “Concerto” programme, co-funded by the European Commission’s Directorate General for Energy and Transport, in the September 2007 – August 2013 period. We assume at the start the principle – emerging in the recent sector literature – that the integration between local energy production technologies (district heating by gas cogeneration, photovoltaic, solar heating energy) is preferable to project solutions aimed at maximising recourse to specific energy generation technologies, viewed separately. An integration of sources which, we hope, can simultaneously ensure a simple management and control. The potential offered by switching from the single building scale to the territorial sub-segment one in the simultaneous presence of several energy sources, highlighted by the results, certainly entails an increased degree of ...