Energy transition of cultural heritage: opportunities, risks, and challenges

Energy transition requires the replacement of fossil fuels with low- or zero-carbon sources of energy. Worldwide Countries have adopted several policies for favoring the energy transition, to face climatic changes and energy crises. These policies can have a serious impact on the authenticity of the architectural heritage due to physical, visual, and spatial modifications. Each intervention should be compatible with heritage values and contemporary lifestyles, to reduce progressive abandonment and destruction caused both by decay, and socioeconomic changes. Technical problems have often emerged, mostly when designers have attempted to force historic buildings to behave like new constructions. Thus this chapter discusses opportunities and risks for the energy transition of the architectural heritage, clarifying some operational aspects to guarantee a correct balance between risks and benefits. To this purpose, a logical and systematic process for selecting heritage-compatible measures for the deeper energy retrofit is deeply discussed, considering diagnosis, intervention, and evaluation phases.