Abstract: “Building construction consumes energy and materials. Even if the scientific community has developed two main voluntary protocols of building construction evaluation (BREAM and LEED), the authors argue that one of the main factors that could be incisive for a better environmental sustainability is to stimulate all possible initiatives, including the reuse of recyclable building materials, that currently, is a modest application. Based on this, the paper is organized in two parts. The first is an analysis of the Italian situation with regard to urban redevelopment and energy saving, considering the number of intiatives and costs handed out for each region. The second evaluates and proposes new insights on the basis of the obtained results.”

Keywords: urban development, energy saving, Italy, building construction evaluation