A DECISION SUPPORT TOOL TO RANK ENERGY EFFICIENCY OPTIONS IN SERVICES BUILDINGS

The reduction of energy use and related emissions in the built environment is a priority for both national and local authorities. Public authorities have to manage varied building stocks with generally low budget available, thus needing to enhance their institutional capacity in the field of energy efficiency and use of renewable energy sources. This paper describes a Decision Support Tool (DST), designed for comparing a portfolio of energy efficiency and renewable energy interventions on the overall set of municipal public buildings of a given local authority resulting in an evaluation of the investment opportunities in terms of costs, energy savings and CO2 emissions avoided. The DST was co-developed, validated and tested for over 300 Municipal Public Buildings (MPB) from five Mediterranean countries (Italy, Portugal, Spain, Greece and Croatia). Selected results are presented for Leziria do Tejo region in Portugal, depicting a ranking of public buildings by the considered criteria. Advantages and disadvantages identified by its users and the usability of the DST are also unfolded.