The Italian context
Building stock
In Italy, over 15 million homes urgently need energy and anti-seismic redevelopment.
This is a particularly inefficient building stock and responsible for the consumption of 25% of energy and over 35% of all the gas used in Italy. In fact, around 70% of Italian homes find themselves in an energy class lower than D: energy-intensive homes, which pollute our cities and have increasingly high management costs.
Climate urgency
In Europe, buildings are responsible for 40% of energy consumption and 36% of climate-changing emissions. If nothing changes, in 2050 construction will consume the entire global budget of emissions established by the Paris Agreement.
The impact on our cities of this situation is considerable. Italian heating systems are still mainly fueled by gas and the local emissions associated with it have a significant impact on the quality of the air we breathe. The current management of construction sites produces traffic, inconvenience and waste that could be reduced thanks to new offsite building processes.
Energy poverty
The low efficiency of homes, in a context of high energy costs and low incomes, creates an exacerbation of the phenomenon of energy poverty (the inability to purchase essential energy goods and services).
The Italian Observatory on Energy Poverty estimates that in 2020 8% of Italian families (2.1 million families) were already in energy poverty: we need to act quickly with more profound interventions especially in the suburbs where the phenomenon of energy poverty is already intense.
The construction sector
The construction sector is characterized today by a fabric of small-sized enterprises with low productivity, low investments in research and development, an advanced age of the workers and out-of-date skills, which make it difficult to face the current regeneration and efficiency needs of the built environment.
The construction sector is in fact marked by stagnant productivity over the last few decades and by generating costs that do not produce value for the public or private investor.
Urban regeneration is also slowed down by a sector that is unable to satisfy the enormous existing demand with times, costs and performances adequate to market expectations. Half of projects are under budget and 40% are over schedule. We need new paradigms that allow us to retrofit more and more quickly, in a way that is less and less dependent on incentives.