Directive 2012/27/EU has set the obligation for buildings supplied by central heating sources, or by district heating/cooling networks, to install individual heat metering and accounting systems. In Italy, almost 5 million dwellings are potentially subject to this obligation. To estimate the related potential benefit the knowledge of the energy saving achievable from the installation of such systems is needed. Unfortunately, in literature a wide range of variability of this benefit has been found and studies regarding Italian buildings are still lacking. The present study is aimed to estimate the impact of this EU policy in terms of potential energy saving in Italy. To this end, the authors first performed an experimental campaign on about 3000 dwellings located in major Italian cities, to assess the potential benefit obtainable. A model to estimate the energy consumption for space heating in the residential building stock has then been developed considering the building typologies and their main technical characteristics. An average benefit of about 11% has been found, leading to an estimated energy saving at national level ranging from 0.3% to 1.9% of whole energy consumption for space heating, depending on the effectiveness of applicable economic incentives and legal obligation scenarios. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.