From the perspectives of the energy and the environment, building stock should be considered a useful resource in the struggle against greenhouse gas emissions and scarcity of energy resources. The aim of this work is to provide an example of the application of a methodology to evaluate the energy needs of the building stock of a city and to determine the possible strategies for energy planning. This paper aims to obtain an estimate, on an urban scale, of the energy needs and CO2 emissions of the public residential buildings of Bari. This estimate is achieved by evaluating the critical issues of the built heritage, the most common architectural typologies and the heating systems in the territory of the city of Bad in southern Italy, as well as the possible strategies for upgrading energy efficiency, through the combined use of energy software and geo-referenced systems. Furthermore, several possible interventions are assumed to improve the energy performance of buildings in not only environmental terms but also economic terms through the instrument of cost-benefit analysis. The ultimate goal is to compare the different intervention strategies to determine which demonstrate greater cost effectiveness and feasibility for future energy planning. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.