The aim of this paper is to propose a methodology for supporting decision making in design activities; in case of new projects or retrofitting of existing buildings. A multidisciplinary approach is adopted; involving Real Estate Appraisal and Economic Evaluation of Project and Building Environmental Design. It is proposed a methodology for selecting the preferable solutions among technological options; considering both economic and environmental aspects; in terms of global performance. Assuming the principles of Life Cycle Thinking and Circular Economy focus is posed at the end-of-life stage. Attention is paid on disposal costs and residual value as relevant items enable to orient investment decisions. This is done through an approach for quantifying environmental indicators related to Life Cycle Assessment (Standard ISO 14040:2006); and economic indicators adopting the Life Cycle Costing (Standard ISO 15686:2008). The paper proposes a conjoint “economic-environmental indicator”. An application of Global Cost calculation is illustrated; including monetized environmental impacts (Embodied energy and Embodied carbon); disposal/dismantling costs and residual value. The result of the Global Cost calculation is expressed through a “synthetic economic-environmental indicator” in order to select; between two different technologies; the most viable solution for a multifunctional building glass façade project; in Northern Italy. The study demonstrates that the initial investment decisions depend on the design solutions; since the early stages; related to the whole building life cycle considering conjointly the construction-management phases and the end-of-life stage.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) on the Italian real estate market, focusing on old buildings. The contribution of EPC labels to house prices and to market liquidity was measured to analyze different aspects of the selling process.Design/methodology/approach: A traditional hedonic model was used to explain the variables of listing price, transaction price, time on the market and bargaining outcome. In addition to EPC labels, the building construction period and the main features of apartments were included in the model. A sample of 879 transactions of old properties in Turin in 2011-2014 was considered.Findings: A first hedonic model let us suppose that low EPC labels (E, F and G) were priced in the market although EPC labels explained only 6-8 per cent of price variation. A second full hedonic model, which included apartment characteristics, revealed that EPC labels had no impact on prices.Originality/value: In Italy EPC has been mandatory for house transactions since 2009, so there are few studies on the effect of EPC on the Italian real estate market at least to our knowledge. Furthermore, unusually for the Italian context, in this paper also transaction prices were analyzed, in addition to the more frequently used listing prices.

The aim of this paper is to grow the literature on methodological approaches directed to find out the most preferable retrofit design solutions for Energy-Efficient Buildings, sustainable from both an environmental and economic point of view. The paper proposes a methodology based on the integration of two existing approaches and finalized to support designers, constructors, developers, and public authorities in the decision-making process. The first approach is based on a joint application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC). The outputs are proposed as an input to the second approach, the Strategic Choice Approach (SCA), considered as a preliminary “platform” in which information deriving from three specific disciplines (“Materials Science and Technology”, “Environmental Technology” and “Real Estate Market Evaluation”) could be structured, shared and accessed by stakeholders, in order to facilitate the decision-making process. First findings are illustrated through an application of the proposed methodology on a case study in the city of Turin (Northern Italy). The selected case study constitutes a reference building for the Turin area because it represents the building construction techniques that mostly need to be refurbished in order to reduce energy consumptions at building level and, as a consequence, at urban level.

The aim of this paper is to propose a methodology for supporting decision-making in the design stages of new buildings or in the retrofitting of existing heritages. The focus is on the evaluation of economic–environmental sustainability, considering the presence of risk and uncertainty. An application of risk analysis in conjunction with Life-Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) is proposed for selecting the preferable solution between technological options, which represents a recent and poorly explored context of analysis. It is assumed that there is a presence of uncertainty in cost estimating, in terms of the Life-Cycle Cost Estimates (LCCEs) and uncertainty in the technical performance of the life-cycle cost analysis. According to the probability analysis, which was solved through stochastic simulation and the Monte Carlo Method (MCM), risk and uncertainty are modeled as stochastic variables or as “stochastic relevant cost drivers”. Coherently, the economic–financial and energy–environmental sustainability is analyzed through the calculation of a conjoint “economic–environmental indicator”, in terms of the stochastic global cost. A case study of the multifunctional building glass façade project in Northern Italy is proposed. The application demonstrates that introducing flexibility into the input data and the duration of the service lives of components and the economic and environmental behavior of alternative scenarios can lead to opposite results compared to a deterministic analysis. The results give full evidence of the environmental variables’ capacity to significantly perturb the model output.

The influence of building or dwelling energy performance on the real estate market dynamics and pricing processes is deeply explored, due to the fact that energy efficiency improvement is one of the fundamental reasons for retrofitting the existing housing stock. Nevertheless, the joint effect produced by the building energy performance and the architectural, typological, and physical-technical attributes seems poorly studied. Thus, the aim of this work is to investigate the influence of both energy performance and diverse features on property prices, by performing spatial analyses on a sample of housing properties listed on Turin’s real estate market and on different sub-samples. In particular, Exploratory Spatial Data Analyses (ESDA) statistics, standard hedonic price models (Ordinary Least Squares—OLS) and Spatial Error Models (SEM) are firstly applied on the whole data sample, and then on three different sub-samples: two territorial clusters and a sub-sample representative of the most energy inefficient buildings constructed between 1946 and 1990. Results demonstrate that Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) labels are gaining power in influencing price variations, contrary to the empirical evidence that emerged in some previous studies. Furthermore, the presence of the spatial effects reveals that the impact of energy attributes changes in different sub-markets and thus has to be spatially analysed.

Considering that in the E.U. public procurement in the construction sector is highly represented, the Directive 2014/24/EU is implemented for harmonizing procurement processes across European countries. The Directive is transposed in Italy, through the Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP) national action plan, for supporting public procurement and public–private partnership (PPP) interventions. SPP is founded on two pillars: according to an economic viewpoint, the financial efficiency is the key aspect to verify, and, according to a sustainability viewpoint, externalities are a key element in the environmental evaluation, despite the fact that their monetary quantification into the global cost calculation is quite complex. Thus, this work aims to explore a methodology for the joint evaluation of economic–environmental sustainability of project options, in the tender evaluation phase of the SPP. The methodology is based on the life cycle costing (LCC) and CO₂ emissions joint assessment, including criteria weighting and uncertainty components. Two alternative technologies—a timber and an aluminum window frame—are assumed as a case for a simulation, implemented with the software “Smart SPP LCC-CO₂ Tool” (developed through the research “Smart SPP—Innovation through sustainable procurement”, supported by Intelligent Energy Europe). The simulation demonstrates that the methodology is a fast and effective modality for selecting alternative options, introducing sustainability in the decision-making process. The work is a contribution to the growing literature on the topic, and for giving support to subjects (public authorities and private operators) involved in public procurement processes/PPP interventions.