Integrated Assessments and Energy Retrofit: The Contribution of the Energy Center Lab of the Politecnico di Torino

Traditionally, local energy planning has been carried out following a sectorial approach, neglecting the long-term effects of energy policies, not considering social and environmental elements and omitting important actors involved. More innovative approaches lead to consider evaluation models able to take into account the full range of impacts generated at the level of utilities, end-users and society in general. This chapter aims to provide a reflection on the role of assessment tools in decision-making processes related to energy retrofit operations at architectural and urban level, presenting a series of recent and innovative experiments developed in the joined research group of the Energy Center Lab at Politecnico di Torino (Italy). Different techniques were applied to real case studies to provide an answer to concrete evaluation problems in the energy field. The results of the various applications show that the proposed valuation techniques offer useful tools to support local energy planning processes according to integrated energy- economic models.