Sustainable housing in the province of Bolzano Alto Adige, Italy
Catalano, Mauro
The development of a strategic plan for the improvement of the energy efficiency and sustainability of housing led to the creation of Climate Housee, an agency that today is synonymous with substantial energy saving in construction and combines well-being with financial saving. The type of traditional construction born after the Second World War had become obsolete because it used considerable quantities of non-renewable sources of energy. As a result the analysis of innovative building techniques began, techniques that limited the use of costly polluting fossil fuels and so also reduced C02 emissions. In 1992 the Province of Bolzano and the municipalities of the Alto Adige joined the Alliance for Climate, an international collaboration between European municipalities and indigenous tribes in the Amazon forest. Right from these years dedicated formative courses were set up to instruct planners and others working in the housing construction sector on the importance of the containment of energy consumption. At the same time the first provincial fundings were introduced for renovations, that is, those who had renovated their homes complying with energy-saving criteria received a substantial financial contribution towards the costs incurred for renovation. With this smart initiative in the Province of Bolzano a strong civic sense began to spread, resulting in the setting up of Climate Housee, a system of certification of conformity to specified energy-saving criteria for buildings, managed by the agency of the same name. The activities of this agency are spreading throughout Italy, increasingly becoming a point of reference for sustainable housing for all regions with a climate similar to that of the Alto Adige.
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