Urban morphology and energy consumption in Italian residential buildings

The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is a key issue to mitigate the climate change and the global warming. The European Union (EU) has defined important goals to 2020 and is promoting a low carbon Roadmap to 2050. The EU is pushing for the reduction of CO2,eq emissions by increasing buildings' efficiency and the use of renewable energy. In 2012, in Europe, the energy consumption was 1.1 GTOE and almost one third was spent in the residential sector. Between the European countries, Italy is in the sixth position for energy demand in the residential sector. Nowadays, most of the policies are related to the retrofit of the existing stock and to the diffusion of new high performing buildings (f.i. nZEB, Passivhaus, etc.). Anyway, especially in the areas with high urbanization rates, investigating how the urban form can affect the energy consumption of a city is extremely important for planning the expansion of new city districts.