Environmental Issues and Energy Potentials in Post-earthquake Reconstruction

Directive (EU) 2018/844 amending Directive 2010/31/EU on the energy performance of buildings and Directive 2012/27/EU on energy efficiency were to be implemented by European Union member states by March 2020. In particular, an explicit reference to existing historical buildings and contexts appeared for the first time in paragraph 18 of the cited Directive 844. This requires member states to encourage research into and the testing of new solutions to improve the energy performance of historical buildings and sites, while also safeguarding and preserving cultural heritage. At last, at European level, there is a sense of awareness of the importance of historical buildings and contexts that architectural, technical–construction and environmental values must be protected and preserved. To date, in fact, the current legislation has revealed deep issues over time, which has become extremely evident during the post-earthquake reconstruction. In this context, issues and practices that focus on sustainable process should be embraced. This theoretical position supports the introduction of principles that will allow the use of what technology offers and all the scientific and technical knowledge now widely available. The implementation of sustainability policies must be based on local knowledge and conditions that allow the highlighting of environmental issues and energy-efficient possibilities. This chapter presents a methodology applied to the city of L’Aquila that allows for the identification of homogeneous areas with regard to environmental behaviour, in which specific strategies could be implemented. These strategies take into consideration the analysis of the values, the transformable elements, the new users’ needs, the level of damage as well as the latest technological solutions in the field of environmental sustainability. In this way, compatible design solutions will be identified and developed based on a sensitive case-by-case approach to the repair and reconstruction of historic buildings damaged during a disaster event.