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The incoming transformation of urban built-up areas, surroundings morphology, and local climate due to global warming connected to the necessity of renewable energy use maximization is the fundamental to the main aim of the present research. Indeed, urban policies can benefit from the accurate monitoring of microclimate variables in order to ensure fine living standards in cities, while improving the energy performance of the built environment. In this view, a systemic experimental approach was implemented. A monitoring campaign using dynamic experimental measurements under real conditions was carried out at an inter-urban scale taking into account different building-plant systems forms and urban configuration. In detail, two innovative portable monitoring systems were used for monitoring key multi-domain parameters at hyperlocal, urban, and intra-urban scale. The monitoring campaign was carried out in summer and winter in the city center of Florence, Italy. Research findings highlighted that urban microclimate control can be a potential factor for urban heat island (UHI) mitigation and sustainable green energy solutions, which involve social, economic, and energy policy beyond environment. The analysis of real microclimate conditions may support the green energy urban policy development in terms of renewable energy integration and urban areas design and management.

Green building concept plays a fundamental role in reducing the use of resources and the impacts on human health and environment, during the whole building life cycle. Therefore, a method to measure the building sustainability rate is crucial for comparing various alternatives in terms of use of different materials, energy resources, production processes to reduce energy consumption and environmental impacts. Many protocols have been proposed to perform buildings’ sustainability evaluation; however, different operators applying these certification tools might need to make hypotheses, even different from each other, to complete the whole procedure. Hence, this work aims to evaluate whether and how the hypotheses formulated by each operator can influence the final certification level. To this end, a Round Robin Test among international partners was performed using different versions of LEED sustainability protocol to the same building with the same boundary conditions, comparing and analyzing the results provided by the participants. The final aim was to identify which issues have more influence on the final performance rate, giving to the users a deeper knowledge of the aspects included in these procedures. The results showed the potential of these building environmental certification systems, capable of offering a transversal level of environmental sustainability. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

The concept of zero energy has emerged as the flagship for the achievement of energy conservation and CO2 emissions reduction in the built environment. The implementation of the concept beyond single buildings offers the potential of expanding the scale of zero energy performance while overcoming the limitations of single buildings related to building use, size, on-site renewable energy availability and cost. Literature to date has discussed the zero energy concept at neighborhood scale mostly by looking at theoretical and simulated cases, including both existing and new developments. All types of energy use can be considered for achieving a zero energy balance at neighborhood scale or only the building related component. Often research focuses on Renewable Energy sizing and management for achieving the balance. The present paper analyses the real data obtained from the first year of monitoring of a pilot Zero Energy Neighborhood. A comprehensive monitoring schema, with a Web-GIS monitoring platform at its core, has been developed for the measurement and verification campaign. Performance analysis has shown that the pilot neighborhood has achieved the targets set for the net regulated consumption, renewable energy production, and cost. When considering the total consumption and PV production of the neighborhood, the first five months of monitoring starting from the beginning of summer, it has achieved a positive balance. Overall, the neighborhood has achieved a positive energy balance on a yearly basis for its regulated energy needs.

Measurement and verification (M&V) has become necessary for ensuring intended design performance. Currently, M&V procedures and calculation methods exist for the assessment of Energy Conservation Measures (ECM) for existing buildings, with a focus on reliable baseline model creation and savings estimation, as well as for reducing the computation time, uncertainties, and M&V costs. There is limited application of rigorous M&V procedures in the design, delivery and operation of low/zero energy dwellings and settlements. In the present paper, M&V for four pilot net-zero energy settlements has been designed and implemented. The M&V has been planned, incorporating guidance from existing protocols, linked to the project development phases, and populated with lessons learned through implementation. The resulting framework demonstrates that M&V is not strictly linked to the operational phase of a project but is rather an integral part of the project management and development. Under this scope, M&V is an integrated, iterative process that is accompanied by quality control in every step. Quality control is a significant component of the M&V, and the proposed quality control procedures can support the preparation and implementation of automated M&V. The proposed framework can be useful to project managers for integrating M&V into the project management and development process and explicitly aligning it with the rest of the design and construction procedures. © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

A key research effort has been dedicated toward zero energy buildings in the last decades. Recent interest is currently switching its focus from single‐building scale to the inter‐building scale, by enlarging the thermal‐energy balance up to the settlement level, with the purpose to optimize the whole district energy efficiency and its environmental sustainability. This scale enlargement up to the district size leads to further optimization opportunities that must be considered when performing building thermal‐energy dynamic simulation. In this view, building within net Zero‐Energy Settlements (nZES) can improve their performance thanks to outdoor microclimate improvement techniques, which could be able to mitigate both winter thermal losses and summer overheating risk. In this work, microclimate modeling and building dynamic simulation tools are integrated to assess the impact of varying microclimate conditions on the building energy performance at settlement level. The case study is represented by a residential district in Italy. In particular, microclimate simulations are carried out to predict the mitigation potential of specific strategies applied at settlement scale, i.e. cool materials, greenery, and their combination. Therefore, starting from the results of the microclimate optimization, new microclimate boundary conditions are generated to be used within the dynamic simulation environment. The final aim is to quantify the impact of such optimized microclimate boundary conditions on the buildings energy performance. Results from the microclimate simulations, supported by the European funded Horizon 2020 project ZERO‐PLUS, highlighted how microclimate can play a key role in affecting outdoor thermal comfort conditions. Moreover, the dynamic simulations carried out by using the results from the microclimate optimization as input weather files always show a decrease on the final energy needs of the building in the nZES. The highest and non‐negligible reduction is reached in the final cooling need of the optimized scenario, coupling both cool and green optimization strategies, i.e. about 12% of the initial value.

Measurement and verification (M&amp, V) has become necessary for ensuring intended design performance. Currently, M&amp, V procedures and calculation methods exist for the assessment of Energy Conservation Measures (ECM) for existing buildings, with a focus on reliable baseline model creation and savings estimation, as well as for reducing the computation time, uncertainties, and M&amp, V costs. There is limited application of rigorous M&amp, V procedures in the design, delivery and operation of low/zero energy dwellings and settlements. In the present paper, M&amp, V for four pilot net-zero energy settlements has been designed and implemented. The M&amp, V has been planned, incorporating guidance from existing protocols, linked to the project development phases, and populated with lessons learned through implementation. The resulting framework demonstrates that M&amp, V is not strictly linked to the operational phase of a project but is rather an integral part of the project management and development. Under this scope, M&amp, V is an integrated, iterative process that is accompanied by quality control in every step. Quality control is a significant component of the M&amp, V, and the proposed quality control procedures can support the preparation and implementation of automated M&amp, V. The proposed framework can be useful to project managers for integrating M&amp, V into the project management and development process and explicitly aligning it with the rest of the design and construction procedures.