Beyond the building scale: addressing energy related issues in urban areas’ environmental performance assessment methods

Built environment’s sustainability enhancement imposes the consideration of all its scales and dimensions, ranging from the materials-to the city scale. Several methods and tools have been developed for the environmental performance assessment of larger than the building entities of the built environment. In this paper, the analysis evolves around the way environmental performance assessment tools for urban development address energy-related factors. In the first part of this work, widely known urban sustainability assessment tools at the neighbourhood scale (BREEAM Communities, LEED for Neighborhood Development, CASBEE for Urban Development, DGNB for Urban Districts) are systematically reviewed; some of their basic features are presented. This review includes elements regarding these tools’ development and application field, as well as parameters related to their structure and methodological basis. The second part of the analysis focuses on the examination of the reviewed systems regarding the inclusion of energy-related issues (e.g., energy consumption and production) into their structure and assessment process. Specifically, the way the related parameters are integrated within each method’s framework and the basis for their assessment (e.g., approaches, criteria, indicators) are detected. Similarities/differences among the presented methods and the examined methodological aspects can be identified both regarding the general features and approaches, and, where possible, at a more detailed level.