56% of Public Buildings in Italy are Inefficient, Planning and Skills Are Lacking

The building sector in Italy, responsible for 42% of energy consumption and 18% of greenhouse gas emissions, represents a fundamental lever on which to intervene to respond to the need for decarbonisation, as foreseen by the European Strategic Agenda.

With an average expenditure of 50 billion euros per year for thermal and electrical consumption in buildings, the obsolescence of the Italian real estate assets underlines the urgency of accelerating: in this context, the Public Administration (PA) can contribute decisively, considering that 56% of public buildings in Italy are inefficient and in the lowest energy classes (one in four is in class G).

Why so many public buildings in Italy are inneficient

In line with the EU Directive, the National Integrated Plan for Energy and Climate ( PNIEC ) now provides for a 3% annual efficiency target for public buildings from 2025 to 2030, a target 9 times higher than the surface area redeveloped between 2014 and 2022.

However, in recent years there has been a contraction in the average rate of redevelopment of public buildings (in 2022 it was 0.7%), highlighting the critical issues that hinder the decarbonisation process, including the lack of planning, the lack of technical skills and the difficulties in using available resources (only between 4% and 50% of the allocated resources were actually spent in the period 2019-2022).

This is what emerges from the analysis conducted by the Smart Building Community of The European House – Ambrosetti (TEHA), the first private and independent Think Tank in Italy that involved supply chain operators, institutions and PA to investigate opportunities and challenges for the smart transition of Italian municipalities.

Now in its third edition, with the support of partners ABB, ANCE Lombardia, BTicino, IRSAP, Kone, MCZ Group, Principe Ares and Veos, the TEHA Smart Building Community aims to evolve from a “think tank” to an “ act tank ” to support policy makers, especially in drafting the new National Plan for the energy requalification of buildings , an objective that goes hand in hand with the updating and expansion of the Smart Building Observatory, to monitor the sector’s progress.

“The contribution of the PA in the decarbonisation process of the building sector is evident and two directions of intervention are identified: the achievement of the decarbonisation objectives imposed by the EU for public buildings and the awareness of citizens on the benefits of the smart requalification of buildings” commented Benedetta Brioschi , Partner and Head of Community Smart Building of TEHA Group.

“However, there is no shortage of critical issues, starting from the lowest bidder method in the procurement process, the lack of technical skills and, at a local level, the difficulties in diagnosing and monitoring interventions. A fundamental lever to accelerate the efficiency of public buildings is to promote an aggregated management of the energy management of buildings through the monitoring of energy data and a more extensive application of the energy diagnosis, a starting point for fully understanding the energy needs of each building and the best interventions to implement.”

In this context, a key instrument is represented by the Public Private Partnership (PPP), which, however, has been little used to date: between 1990 and 2021, only 4.5 billion euros were spent, compared to 93 billion in the United Kingdom.

“PPPs offer numerous advantages, including faster implementation times, lower impact on public finances, greater incentive for innovation, risk sharing and cost optimization for the entire life cycle of buildings” explained Lorenzo Tavazzi , Senior Partner and Head of Scenarios & Intelligence at TEHA Group.

“Furthermore, they allow for better integration between public and private expertise, creating tailor-made solutions for each specific need. Among the missions of the Smart Building Community there is also the commitment to foster dialogue and collaboration between industry operators and public decision-makers: operators in the smart building supply chain can support the PA in identifying the most suitable technologies to accelerate the efficiency of public buildings and to fill the skills gap that today is one of the main obstacles to achieving energy efficiency objectives”.

Decarbonization of the PA, Italy is behind

TEHA’s analysis highlights how in Italy, by 2024, 56% of public buildings are in the three worst energy classes (E, F, G), with a quarter (24%) concentrated in class G alone, while the higher energy classes (A4, A3, and A2) represent just 4% of the total.

To reduce emissions in the sector, the PA has set itself ambitious goals: the State Property Agency has allocated 2.1 billion euros to redevelop 5 million square meters of surface area by 2026 and, through PREPA (Programme for the Energy Requalification of PA buildings), it has been planned to make 18% of public buildings more efficient between 2025 and 2030, with an efficiency rate of 3% per year and an annual reduction in energy consumption of 1.9%.

In light of these objectives, the PA today appears to be lagging behind. After the peak in 2018, when it reached 4.1%, the annual rate of redevelopment of public buildings has dropped significantly, stopping at 0.7% in 2022.

Even industry operators and representatives of local authorities, involved in a survey conducted by the Community Smart Building, are not very optimistic: for 94% of those interviewed, the reconversion rate will increase but will remain far from the target set by PREPA. The most critical category is represented by schools and universities (82% of the sample), which actually represent 38% of the PA’s real estate portfolio. Almost half (47%) consider it a priority to intervene on public residential buildings, while 41% indicate hospitals and 12% public offices.

The obstacles that slow down the redevelopment of public buildings

The decarbonisation process in the PA faces several critical issues. The most notable are the problems of financial management, the selection method in tenders which, often based on the lowest bid, limits the innovation and quality of technological solutions and does not guarantee adequate profitability for companies.

The problems most felt by professionals, reveals the TEHA survey, are bureaucratic delays and the excessive number of entities involved (indicated by 68% of the sample) and the lack of funds (53%). They are followed by the lack of technical skills within the PA (42%), which limits the ability to plan, manage and evaluate interventions, the adoption of the lowest bid criterion as the main selection method in tenders (32%), which compromises the quality and innovation of the solutions adopted, and critical issues in the diagnosis and monitoring phase of the results of the interventions (26%).

Another element that emerged from the survey as critical for the smart transition of public buildings is the importance of considering each of the parts that make up the buildings when defining efficiency interventions , and of also considering the flow of people as one of the dimensions to be examined. Doors, turnstiles, elevators are also elements that can be integrated and connected and contribute to the energy efficiency of the complex. An example are the solutions that allow the transformation of excess energy generated by a braking elevator into electricity that can be reused elsewhere in the building, from lighting in common areas to air conditioning.

The opportunity of the Public Private Partnership for the search for specialized figures
In this context, for 72% of the sample interviewed by TEHA (in this case, composed in particular of representatives of local authorities) the Public Private Partnership (PPP) is a key tool to support the decarbonisation of the PA through private capital. To fully capitalise on these opportunities, greater commitment and a well-coordinated strategy at national level to promote and implement such partnerships are essential. Italy , in fact, with only 4.5 billion euros, shows a relatively moderate use of PPP, unlike the United Kingdom (93 billion), France (14.1 billion) and Spain (7.9 billion).

The entry of private capital can instead accelerate the implementation times of projects, reducing the financial burden on public bodies, as well as lead to an increase in innovation, thanks to access to advanced technologies and specialized skills . In particular, engineers (60%), designers (50%), HVAC and home automation system installers (40%), and maintenance and security technicians (40%) are the most sought-after profiles in the Smart Buildings sector.

Figures that the PA has had considerable difficulty finding in recent years, with 71.6% of positions for engineers and architects and 37.5% for IT technicians remaining vacant: a skills gap that represents an obstacle in the effective implementation of sustainability and technological innovation policies in the context of public buildings and that could be filled precisely through collaboration with the private sector.

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(Featured image by Zoshua Colah  via Unsplash)

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