Towards (nearly Zero Energy Buildings) nZEB educational buildings. Two scenarios to solve the energy performance, indoor environmental quality and capacity of the existing school buildings

School buildings are fundamental to transmit civic values and importance of a better environment to future generations. Besides the low consume of energy and exploit of renewable resources, an energy-efficient school also provides a good Indoor Environmental quality (IEQ), very important for the students and teachers. Quite often, the refurbishment of the existing school buildings is approached exclusively in an energy-efficiency perspective. Unlike new buildings, where energy-efficiency goals are much easier to meet through a wider range of solutions leading toward low consumes of energy (sometimes near to zero), in the case of existing ones the morphology and technology of the building represent important obstacles. Since 2010, in the European Union EU, the refurbished buildings (regardless their destination) were required to produce their own energy demand from renewable sources. Defined as “nearly Zero Energy Buildings” (nZEB) and introduced for the first time in the EPBD 2010 recast, by producing their own energy demand without generating harmful emissions it was possible to reduce the dependence from the grid, known for transmitting power generated from non-renewable sources such as fossil fuels and nuclear energy. Albania, a potential candidate to become a member of the EU, has transposed two important directives the EPBD 2010 recast and EED 2012 in its legislation but still not operative. Because of the missing acts regulating the technical aspects of building envelope elements, heating/cooling plants, exploit of renewable resources and in particular the certification of the energetic consume achieved through various labels, that (new or refurbished) buildings obtain. Refurbishment interventions on existing school buildings, performed by public administrations to reduce energy consumption and improve the indoor comfort are the clear example of this unclear energy efficiency framework. Most of the public school buildings of the nine-year cycle were built during the socialist system (known as Shkolla Tip ). Usually, they have been subject to refurbishment interventions without a clear goal, even though their building technology does not allow a wide range of interventions. Poor energetic-performance apart, capacity is also a serious problem. The low number of classrooms constrain the split of the didactic activity in two rounds (morning and afternoon), posing an important dilemma between the necessity to refurbish versus the possibility to demolish and build new ones. The “Hillary Clinton” school, in the Kamza municipality, has been chosen as case because of the necessity to refurbish and increase the capacity. By proposing a set of technological solutions, there will be proved the convenience deriving from the refurbishment and the increase of capacity of the existing school buildings against their demolition and building of a new energy-efficient school with the desired capacity. Furthermore, considering our climatic context and the “sustainability” of our national grid system, the decarbonization of the school building stock in the country may occur sooner than the expected EU goal for 2050. For this reason, the refurbishment proposals will consider two possible scenarios: (i) the refurbishment by preserving the capacity and; (ii) the refurbishment with increase of capacity.