Many studies have focused their attention on the concept of zero energy, presented by the European Directive on the energy performance of buildings. These studies are often related to a single building: only a few of them have verified the advantages of its application to a larger scale.
Energy savings and other more tangible and monetary benefits of green or high performance building have long been apparent in business. Although some of these green building initiatives are expensive to implement, tangible benefits alone may not offset the initial costs of the projects, especially when considering shorter time horizons. Fortunately, intangible benefits of green building also exist, and for the promotion of such projects must be taken into account as co-benefits.
This thesis aims to investigate the "nearly Zero Energy District" (nZED) concept, and tries to propose a calculation method, starting from two cost and benefit analyses (CBA), one developed by EPRI in USA, and the other one by JRC in Europe about Smart Grid projects. Both of them take in consideration three main topics: the costs, the monetary and not benefits.
The second main challenges of this thesis is to try to monetize projects qualitative benefits, and to create a single evaluation index for monetary and not benefits, in order to include them in a single calculation procedure.
In the end, selected a neighbourhood in Turin, it will be transformed into a nearly zero energy district, thanks to an energetic retrofit and, following this methodological approach, four different scenarios will be compared in order to identify the best solution from an "socio-economic" point of view, by SROI analysis.
Keywords: nearly Zero Energy District; Energetic retrofit; non-monetary benefit.