Envisioning an Energy Performance Certificate for livestock houses: A general methodological development and a specific application to growing-finishing pig houses

Climate control represents a significant energy use in livestock houses. Although energy-efficient solutions aimed at reducing this energy consumption are expanding, their spread in these facilities is hindered by the lack of standardized methodologies for assessing their impacts on the energy performance. An Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) for livestock houses represents a solid solution for assessing and rating the energy performance of these buildings accordingly to a standardized methodology. Unfortunately, specific EPC s for livestock houses are not present in literature. The aim of this work is to propose the first methodological framework for an EPC specifically developed for livestock houses which can be easily adapted to different types of livestock productions. An exemplificative adaptation and a practical application are provided for growing-finishing pig houses with the aim of clarifying the certification procedure, highlighting the potentialities of this approach, and providing and discussing some examples of results. The results show that the certified pig house has a low energy performance, labelled with the class E. By adopting the energy efficiency measures proposed in the framework of the EPC, the energy performance could remarkably improve and achieve a class-B rating. This EPC proposal represents a complete novelty in literature and an innovative and promising approach to the topic of energy efficiency in livestock sector by enhancing the comparison of the energy performance between existing livestock houses or design alternatives equipped with different energy-efficient technologies and solutions.