Reply to "Prioritization of energy efficiency proposals in public buildings based on individual approach. Comment on: Ijerph-805767 'how to prioritize energy efficiency intervention in municipal public buildings to decrease co2 emissions? A case study from Italy'"

This is a reply to the paper by Miroslav Variny [1] that commented on our recently published work, "How to prioritize energy efficiency intervention in municipal public buildings to decrease CO2 emissions? A case study from Italy" [2]. The authors greatly appreciate the careful review carried out by Dr. Variny and his useful comments, which will be taken into serious consideration for further studies aimed at improving the presented Decision Support Tool (DSTool) and expanding its future applications. While finding relevant the observations made by Dr. Variny, we would like to underline that the DSTool is not suitable to be used as an individual approach to investigate single buildings in detail. In fact, it was designed and implemented with the broad aim of providing decision-makers and technicians with an easy-to-use tool to compare a portfolio of energy efficiency (EE) and renewable energy (RES) interventions within the stock of municipal public buildings (MPB) and provide an evaluation of the investment opportunities in terms of costs, energy savings and avoided CO2 emissions [3]. In fact, nZEB (Nearly Zero Energy Building) conditions, the overarching target and the gold standard, are difficult to achieve without carrying out an in-depth renovation of the existing buildings, within the limited available budget of public administrations.