Abstract
Smart Cities are a powerful means for creating more livable and sustainable urban areas. Nevertheless, Smart City projects involving energy renovation of buildings present recurrent barriers to implementation - namely, i.) the wide time discrepancy between the appreciable benefits and the immediate costs of action, and ii.) the fact that who bears the cost of the intervention might not be the one directly benefitting from it. We estimate some of the multiple-benefits arising from the deep energy renovation of buildings with the aim of shifting the perspective from mitigation costs to development opportunities. We considered the interventions on the European building stock under Smart City projects to estimate some of the multiple-benefits delivered to society. We focused on i.) Energy savings; ii.) Health; and iii.) Employment. Between 2005 and 2018 about 260 million Euros were invested in energy renovations under Smart City projects and this led to: i.) an accumulated saving potential of approximately 40 kilotons of oil equivalent; ii.) a reduction in air pollution corresponding to a value of 3 million Euros; and iii.) the creation of about 1,000 jobs