The energy cost of the indoor climate quality in museums: the “green meuseums” challenge

Indoor climatic control is a crucial aspect for artefacts conservation in museum environments to prevent damages. Last years development of technologies and equipments aimed at continuous monitoring the indoor environmental parameters (temperature, relative humidity, air speed, lighting, air pollutants, etc.) allowed the collection, elaboration and analysis of indoor environmental data in order to avoid any deterioration processes on works of art: preventive control programmes are nowadays widely applied in museums. Anyway, what is the energy price we have to pay to maintain a strict mechanical indoor climatic control in museum? Is it really necessary to keep the indoor climatic parameters within a narrow range? These are key questions because also museums have to face with: - energy issues, where the goal is a rational use of energy sources and an increasing application of renewable sources - environmental issues, where the goal is a reduction of CO2 emission - economical issues, where the goal is to reduce the impact of energy costs. Nevertheless, in museums these goals have to be achieved without compromising preservation aspects: that's the way to follow for a new target for museums, the “green museum”. The study will present investigations aimed at highlighting the relationship between indoor environmental quality level in museums, as defined by ASHRAE Applications Handbook [2] and Italian Standard UNI 10829/1999 [1], and the energy and environmental costs necessary to provide the required indoor environmental quality level, analysing different thermo-physical characteristics of the building envelope and different HVAC system solutions.