Borgo San Paolo nursery school in Prato, Italy, improved its energy performance thanks to SOLE

Borgo San Paolo nursery school, located in the Municipality of Prato, Italy, has improved its energy performance thanks to the requalification interventions carried out by the SOLE project, cofinanced by ENI CBC MED programme.

The nursery school and playground had been built in the 1960s and, like most public buildings of that time in Italy, it needed urgent energy requalification interventions to improve its energy performance.

In fact, the ground floor which is placed at the very same level of the external courtyard could only rely on a weakly ventilated cavity while the fixtures were made of wood and simple glass, resulting in a very low thermo-acoustic performance. The building's heating system was served by a thermal power plant, recently redevelopped by setting up a functioning regulation and remote control system, as well as a solar thermal system for the production of domestic hot water.

The energy requalification intervention, planned and carried out within the SOLE project's framework, consisted in the replacement of doors, windows and lighting fixtures as well as in the application of thermal insulation material to the external walls. In addition, a home automation and monitoring system had to be installed in order to optimise the building's energy need.

The works were carried out from the beginning of July 2022 to the end of April 2023. Thanks to this succesful intervention cofinanced by project SOLE, Borgo San Paolo nursery school's energy classification has improved and gone from F to D class. Other expected environmental impacts are 30% of annual energy savings and 10,30 tons/year of CO2 emission avoided.

As previously mentioned, Borgo San Paolo nursery school also participated to SOLE's ACT GREEN campaign to empower employees and young families to reduce energy consumption. Moreover the Municipality of Prato's staff who supervised the energy requalification interventions in the nursery school also participated to the #SOLEenergyTALKS meetings in Florence and contributed with their valuable experience as stakeholders offering useful tips on how to facilitate the implementation of energy requalification inteventions on public buildings across the Mediterranean.

Capitalising on the SOLE project pathway, the Municipality of Prato recently included the #SOLEenergyTALKS's policy reccomendations in its "Climate City Contract," a climate-neutrality plan that Prato is developing as one of the 100 cities selected by the European Commission for the "100 Smart and Zero Impact Cities in 2030" mission.