Proposal of technical constructive obligations to reduce the summer energetic consumptions

The continual increase of fuel consumption and costs, which is affecting many European countries, has provoked a notable interest, also from a legislative point of view. To this aim, particular attention must be paid to the building cooling: in the summer, in fact, there is a great demand of indoor comfort with consequent increase of energy for air-conditioning, which is nowadays significant in relation to the heating requirement. In this context, the object of the present work is the development of new technical constructive standards to limit the energy needs of new buildings or in the case of significant renovation, specifically for the summer season. The study was carried out in reference to Italy, as the particular case-study, providing in any case a general methodology which can be applied to other European countries on the basis of the characteristic climate data. Moreover, the standards system developed for Italy was tested on actual cases; with particular reference to the solar factor limit tables, significant benefits result in terms of reducing the energy use for the summer-time cooling. Less remarkable, instead, are the benefits which can derive from the application of the limits imposed for the absorption coefficient of the opaque structures.