Valuing benefits from buildings energy savings: An econometric approach

Energy certifycation attests the buildings energy performance and it was introduced by the European Directive 2002/91/CE as a tool for supporting information and transparency in real estate markets. The present paper intends to investigate the role of the energy certification in the formation of the market value of an estate. In particular, the study proposes an application of the Hedonic Prices method on a sample of residential buildings located in the city of Torino. The objective of the application is to determine the willingness to pay of the buyers with respect to energy-efficient buildings. The outputs of the research show that the consumers demonstrate to appreciate high energy performance classes and this results is aligned with the main findings coming from other international scientific studies. The obtained results could be further verified through the integration of the proposed approach with the cost-optimal methodology.