Energy Auditor and Building Certification: Three School Buildings Case Studies in Florence, Italy

Energy audits are an important step in the energy buildings management process. They provide energy essential information to determine how efficiently is the building and where energy is being consumed or loosed, identify energy consumption and cost saving opportunities and show the potential process and productivity improvements (for industrial buildings), or improvements in building services and occupant comfort (for commercial buildings, private and public). Implementing energy audit recommendations saves money and lowers greenhouse gas emissions, but the benefits of energy efficiency are more and go beyond this. The capacity to design an effective energy audit would be the first element of any energy professional certification. The aim of this work is to define the professional development line guide and establish a preferred certification model that meets the desired outcomes, extensive consultation for the public building design area. In this project, we have analyzed three energy audit of school buildings of the Municipality of Florence in Italy, these audits are the result of a University specialization course for potential energy auditors. In the present work, the case studies identify an Energy Standard Audit that fit the user’s budget, timelines, and business objectives. The resulted scheme is designed to achieve mechanisms of control for addressing any training gaps in the professional pathway to energy audit certification methods. The scoping study is limited to school buildings in the public sector.