Dr Maurizio Sibilla

The transition from nearly zero-emission building (NZEB) to positive energy building (PEB) models is a new trend, justified by the need to increase the efforts to address the climate change targets and the ambition for a clean energy transition in the construction sector. In line with this scenario, this study assumes that PEB may be applied to meet climate change targets and promote new approaches to urban regeneration plans. It focuses on the functional and energy regeneration of abandoned buildings, considering that many abandoned European buildings are often located in a strategic part of the city. Therefore, the research question is as follows: to what extent can abandoned buildings be converted into a PEB? What would be the meaning of this new association? In order to answer this question, this study developed a procedure to transform an abandoned building into a PEB, implemented through a case study of a former Italian industrial site. Findings pointed out the variables impacting PEB configuration and were used to support a
discussion, stressing how rethinking abandoned buildings as PEB may drive new trends to synchronise the socio-technical evolution of energy infrastructure and urban regeneration plans.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide emanating from activities associated with the construction
of buildings in the UK contributes approximately 16% of the UK’s total and will need to be reduced
significantly to meet international agreements. Against this scenario, this paper presents a novel
perspective for carbon accounting and trading that proposes the use of a platform for the UK construction
industry as a possible solution. This suggestion assumes that taxation should be synchronised
with phases of the entire life cycle of the building and that tax credits (or deficits) should remain an
asset of the building itself. In this regard, a strategy is in place in the UK, but with gaps in how it will
be implemented. To resolve these gaps, firstly, this paper explores and integrates three socio-technical
components (i.e., carbon accounting, trading and certification) that form an essential set of tools
required for the management of taxes directed at property developers and construction companies.
Then, it points out the need for a suite of computer-based systems to facilitate the recording of emissions
information, the purchase of carbon offsets, and a way to access specialist financial services. As
a result, a trading platform is conceptualised that makes use of blockchain technology as a foundation
for future research.

This paper analyses stakeholders' perspectives about Building-as-Energy-Service as a pillar concept concerning a new energy transition paradigm. In detail, it focuses on developing a Toolkit, which was designed to help energy-transition-oriented intermediaries understand the socio-technical implications of such a concept. In this study, a qualitative approach was adopted. Eight academic and eight non-academic stakeholders tested the Toolkit Alpha version. As a result, a framework of key concepts and relationships was carried out and used to deliver the Beta version. Findings stressed the usability of such a Toolkit to develop skills and competencies to drive the co-design of technological and social processes connected with the energy transition. Specifically, this study pointed out the extent to which the concept of Building-as-Energy Service is perceived by the stakeholders involved, discussing and interpreting key points to put this concept into practice at the local level.

Positive Energy Block (PEB) is an emerging paradigm to transform cities into low carbon cities. It is expected that buildings will become the main components of the future energy infrastructure. This scenario demands a structural integration of the cyclical environmental variables in designing our buildings and cities as a whole. However, such an integration continue to be rare due to the dominance of object-oriented approaches. This study contributes to reducing these difficulties by developing a process-oriented approach, focusing on the wind contribution. The assumption posed herein is that the transition towards PEBs should be an opportunity to redefine the rules to organise the built environment structure integrating energy and urban environmental qualities. A case study, involving three public school buildings located in three different urban patterns in Rome, illustrates a preliminary step in developing an integrated platform to orient strategic design solutions towards PEBs. This is done by developing and assessing three indexes: Wind form index, Wind thermal-loss index, and Wind Energy Production index. The results point out the usability and limits concerning the approach adopted, stressing the relevance of an integrated platform to support decision-makers in planning the agenda to transform buildings as components of PEBs.

Positive Energy Buildings (PEBs) represent an emerging paradigm for high performance in the building sector. This paradigm focuses on the possibility of exploiting the interaction between individual NZEBs and smart Smart Grids, using energy surplus exchange. Acknowledging this technical potential, building sector should re-think the role of individual buildings as nodes of intelligent energy infrastructures with large penetration of distributed renewable energy resources. This requires a better understanding of the emerging properties related to PEBs and an organisation of new alliances across sectors in order to put PEBs nets into practice. However, there is no evidence of a comprehensive socio-technical framework concerning PEBs nets working at scale. This paper aims to fill this gap. Through a literature review, based on Constructive Grounded Theory Method, it proposes a new conceptual framework focused on Buildings-as-Energy-Service as a key enabler for creating PEBs nets. Research findings are organized according to four integrated lines of research, which describe: the trajectory towards PEBs nets; the management of new alliances across sectors; the definition of an ecosystem of applications for PEBs; and, the socio-technical implications in putting PBEs into practice. These research lines may contribute to re-inventing the role of the building sector in delivering tailor-made products and services for a low carbon society. Thus, academic and non-academic stakeholders in the fields of Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Planning might find this conceptual framework useful, as it summarises significant potential interactions among these sectors, emerging from recent studies. The limitations of the proposed framework are  stressed as an incentive for further research in these areas.

Decarbonisation and efficiency goals set as a response to global warming issue require appropriate decision-making strategies to promote an effective and timely change in energy systems. Conceptualization of change is a relevant part of energy transitions research today, which aims at enabling radical shifts compatible with societal functions and market mechanisms. In this framework, construction sector can play a relevant role because of its energy and environmental impact. There is, however, the need to move from general instances to specific actions. Open data and open science, digitalization and building data interoperability, together with innovative business models could represent enabling factors to accelerate the process of change. For this reason, built environment research has to address the co-evolution of technologies and human behaviour and the analytical methods used for this purpose should be empirically grounded, transparent, scalable and consistent across different temporal/spatial scales of analysis. These features could potentially enable the emergence of “ecosystems” of applications that, in turn, could translate into projects, products and services for energy transitions in the built environment, proposing innovative business models that can stimulate market competitiveness. For these reasons, in this paper we organize our analysis according to three levels, from general concepts to specific issues. In the first level, we consider the role of building energy modelling at multiple scales. In the second level, we focus on harmonization of methods for energy performance analysis. Finally, in the third level, we consider emerging concepts such as energy flexibility and occupant-centric energy modelling, considering their relation to monitoring systems and automation. The goal of this research is to evaluate the current state of the art and identify key concepts that can encourage further research, addressing both human and technological factors that influence energy performance of buildings.

The havoc caused by COVID-19 has further strengthen the case for greening cities and ensuring a quicker economic recovery much desired by various governments. To this end, the appetite for Distributed Renewable and Interactive Energy Systems (DRIES) as a preferred option to retrofit cities has grown amongst policy makers. However, DRIE sources are complex and disparate presenting challenges integrating into a unified system for urban retrofitting. Yet, integrating Building Information Modelling (BIM) and DRIES provide possibilities of effective assessment. Research of BIM applications at a city level is still very sketchy talk less in the domain of DRIES. This study investigates the opportunities and barriers of the application of BIM for the performance assessment of DRIES in the context of the transforming our environments into lowcarbon cities. A systematic literature review and case study review were used to achieve the aim of this study.

Positive Energy Block (PEBock) is a new paradigm towards low carbon cities. However, there is paucity of literature about methods and tools on how to develop PEBlock in practice. This study deals with this gap by developing a multi-criteria decision making optimisation framework for PEBlocks for cities. A case study method is adopted to assess a PEBlock scenario based on adaptable criteria and actions applied to a block composed of three buildings where only one will act as a positive node of the future energy network. Findings point out the flexibility of PEBlock scenarios, weighting each criterion and action and delivering a procedure to drive the transformation of a group of existing buildings into a PEBlock. This study contributes to understanding the emerging properties concerning PEBlocks, discussing its features and stressing main peculiarities compared to other models (e.g. positive energy districts) and concepts (e.g. net-zero energy concept). It also emphasises PEBlock as a feasible and reliable energy infrastructure to support the organisation of new forms of energy organisations (e.g. self-organised energy communities), drawing future developments and implications.

The integration of transformative pedagogies into curricula is recognised as a strategy to deal with the new demands of complexity in learning, which include equipping future professionals with the necessary knowledge and skills to transition to a low carbon built environment. It requires a dedicated interdisciplinary learning environment. Creating this environment remains a challenge due to the lack of a learning tool to facilitate an interdisciplinary approach. Perhaps due to this challenge, interdisciplinarity within the context of Low Carbon Transition in the built environment has not been sufficiently explored. This study deals with this gap in the literature by developing a pedagogical approach founded on the combined use of Grounded Theory Method, Cognitive Mapping Technique and Meaningful Learning Activities. This paper focuses on the testing phase of this approach, which engaged researchers, postgraduate and undergraduate students. The findings promote a transformative pedagogy to explore the socio-technical dimension of the Low Carbon Transition. They point out the type of interdisciplinarity, which we need to integrate into traditional curricula, moving from vocabulary construction at the undergraduate level to exploration of different perspectives at the postgraduate level. Recommendations on the ways in which this approach could become common practice are also made.

Since the 1990s Higher Education has had a critical role in the process of integration of
transformative pedagogies to promote interdisciplinary competences for sustainable development.
In spite of the wide recognition of the impact of these transformative pedagogies, their integration
in traditional learning programmes is often neglected. This paper focuses on an advanced training on
Energy Efficiency in Historic Heritage, as a part of an Erasmus+ programme Strategic Partnership
project, funded by the European Commission which was implemented between 2014 and 2016,
involving five European Countries. The scope of this project was to investigate on complex
interactions between social and physical science concerning the integrated project about urban
sustainability and preservation. An experimental approach founded on the combined use of
cognitive mapping technique and meaningful learning activities in an interdisciplinary context was
adopted. Two experiences, for trainers and learners, were carried out in order to test the new
learning approach. The results showed how this approach may be considered as a cognitive
apparatus able to enhance collective aspects of practices pointing out two components of
transformative pedagogy.

This study explores the role of Energy Retrofit (ER) in Low Carbon Transition (LCT). The literature recognises the need to move towards a transdisciplinary approach in ER, which encompasses multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity. However, the fragmentation between different disciplines remains a significant problem, mainly due to challenges associated with knowledge exchange across the allied disciplines that play a role in ER. The authors posit that ER projects has been conceptualised and implemented using a Systems perspective so that an integrated approach that is akin to transdisciplinarity could become commonplace. Against this background, the aim of this paper is to establish to what extent ER has been conceptualised as a
System in the literature so that complexities can effectively be managed through a transdisciplinary approach. This work is based on a literature review of 136 peer-reviewed journal papers. The content analysis demonstrates that current research on transdisciplinarity in ER can be conceptualised in five categories and 15 lines of research. They are presented as a Conceptual Framework, which is this paper’s main contribution to existing knowledge. It reveals the direction of innovation in ER for LCT, and is illustrated as a cognitive map. This map exposes the current fragmentation implicit in the literature, and proposes critical connections that need to be established for a transdisciplinary approach. It also shows that the discourse on LCT changed by moving beyond the building scale; and recognising the need to embrace disruptive and local technologies, and integrating the social and technical aspects of ER. Innovative technical solutions and robust information modelling approaches emerge as key vehicles towards making decisions that pay regard to the economic, social and technical factors and that empower the prosumers to play an active role in LCT.

Urban reforestation is recognised as a valid strategy to counter the loss of functionalities of the ecosystem services in an urban context, where vegetation has the dual role of environmental and landscape qualitative indicator. Ecological studies have explored methods to assess these qualities, and the Index of Landscape Conservation (ILC) represents one of the most advanced approaches developed in this field. Nevertheless, this method has been mainly applied in large scale planning models (e.g. regional and provincial). Consequently, the potential of this method at the urban scale has not been explored yet. This study deals with this lacuna, analysing the environmental and landscape qualities of the rural matrix of the Latina municipality, whose naturalness and identity of this Mediterranean landscape are compromised by the urban sprawl. Specifically, urbanisation is progressively altering both the riparian vegetation of the hydrographic network (i.e. natural component) and the windbreak vegetation barriers (i.e. identity component) of the Latina landscape. Therefore, in order to contrast this phenomenon, an innovative approach has been implemented, which is based on the combined use of the re-calibration of ILC and the analysis of the level of isolation of residual natural fragments in the rural matrix. Findings are useful to formulate environmental design proposals aimed at promoting direct actions of urban reforestation by inhabitants for the conscious recovery of ecosystem services.

Distributed, Renewable and Interactive energy Systems (DRIs) are revolutionising the concept of infrastructure by introducing a set of new properties. The implications of the new system properties in the realm of Urban Design are often neglected. This paper proposes a simplified procedure to reconcile DRIs and urban patterns. This procedure is tested on 23 school buildings in four urban regions of the Ostiense district in Rome. Findings suggest that the identification of existing buildings as active, neutral and passive nodes in DRIs can make a significant contribution to Urban Design decisions in order to exploit the renewable energy production capacity inherent in urban patterns. 

European Policies consider a multitude of Low Carbon Technologies to transform cities to Low Carbon Cities. Some of these technologies can form distributed systems. These are newforms of Energy Networks which can contribute to reducing the vulnerability and homogenization of urban patterns as they evolve to become part of the urban infrastructure. This evolution process also involves computerizing elements of the infrastructure, and thus relates to the Smart City concept. In this sense, a Distributed and Renewable energy system becomes interactive promoting a set of novel system properties. Following a qualitative approach, this paper presents an innovative conceptual framework in order to establish, communicate and disseminate these new system properties. 

Developing the ability to manage complexity has become an essential element for the training of designers. In such a context, complexity mainly arises from the need to integrate knowledge and expertise. The project is grounded in a hypothesis of systematizing Meaningful Learning Activities with computer applications dedicated to the elaboration of cognitive maps, in order to develop the ability to manage the complexity of high-interaction flows which can be found in the project of energy efficiency in historic buildings. This paper focuses on two experimental courses, with the aim to assess the formative approach adopted. The results highlight an innovative procedure and a tool helpful both to trainers and to learners to assess and direct the quality of the complex design process.