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Cogeneration of heat and electricity is an important pillar of energy and climate policy. To plan the production and distribution system of combined heat and power (CHP) systems for residential heating, suitable methods for decision support are needed. For a comprehensive feasibility analysis, the integration of the location and capacity planning of the power plants, the choice of customers, and the network planning of the heating network into one optimization model are necessary. Thus, we develop an optimization model for electricity generation and heat supply. This mixed integer linear program (MILP) is based on graph theory for network flow problems. We apply the network location model for the optimization of district heating systems in the City of Osorno in Chile, which exhibits the “checkerboard layout” typically found in many South American cities. The network location model can support the strategic planning of investments in renewable energy projects because it permits the analysis of changing energy prices, calculation of break-even prices for heat and electricity, and estimation of greenhouse gas emission savings.

A Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) is a strategic (long period) transportation plan aimed to improve welfare of both people and workers living in the city as well as in its surrounding area. Compared to “traditional” urban transportation plans, SUMP moves the focus from traffic (vehicles) to people with significant advancements in the direction of a sustainable mobility jointly with the quality of life. According to the recent European Guidelines, this type of strategic plan has to be built on existing planning practices and take due consideration: the integration, the participation, and evaluation. Starting from these considerations, in absence of a detailed national guideline implementing SUMP, the aim of this paper was to apply an innovative theoretical decision-making approachfor the development of the Naples (Italy) SUMP. This case study appears to be interesting because of the specificity of Naples, that is the third largest Italian city and metropolitan area with the highest population density. In 2016, the city of Naples has efficiently concluded and ratified a first formalization of acts: 'The analysis of mobility system' and ‘The statement of strategic objectives

AbstractNowadays, many health, environmental, and economic concerns are associated with fossil fuel use, and therefore the improvement of new and advanced technologies and the use of renewable fuel...

Today, the use of renewable energies in buildings represents one of the main ways to reach a sustainable world. Whilst present buildings are still often energivorous systems, in the near future they will have to be converted to (or replaced by) zero energy buildings, also capable to export green energy (produced on-site by renewables) towards other buildings and/or users. This review article focuses on a selection of research papers, presented at the 16th International Conference on Building Simulation (BS 2019), regarding renewable energy applications, energy saving and comfort techniques for buildings. BS 2019 conference was organized in collaboration with the International Building Performance Simulation Association (IBPSA) and it was held at the Angelicum Congress Centre (San Tommaso d’Aquino Pontifex University) in Rome, Italy, during September 2-4, 2019. The conference was attended by 912 researchers and experts, with 660 presented research papers. The above-mentioned selection of papers is included in a dedicated Special Issue of the Renewable Energy - An International Journal (RENE), titled “Renewable energies: simulation tools and applications”. Reported studies are mostly dedicated to models, simulations, and optimization procedures of renewable energy devices. Specifically, photovoltaic systems, building integrated photovoltaic collectors, hybrid photovoltaic/thermal systems, solar thermal collectors as well as other energy efficiency tools are analysed through different simulation approaches and suitable optimization procedures. Attention is also paid to specific case studies related to innovative combinations of renewable energy devices and innovative envelope materials in different building typologies and weather zones. In some papers, solar energy is exploited for space heating and cooling purposes, while in other articles renewables or other energy tools are studied to achieve comfort targets, low grid dependencies, smart building/communities, and mainly the zero energy building goal.

Taking GDP as the standard economic indicator for economic welfare, recent Resources-Economy studies indicate the “dematerialization” of the economy, the so-called decoupling effect. This conclusion seems to alleviate concerns over resource scarcity and limits to growth, and feeds optimism for green growth and sustainability prospects. However, the validity of GDP as the sole and unambiguous measure of the ultimate outcome of the economy has been severely disputed. There is nowadays increasing interest in broader welfare measurements that capture more aspects of economic output and hence constitute better approximations of well-being. The present paper provides an overview of the above discussion and sets out to explore the relevance of three alternative welfare indicators – the Human Development Index (HDI), the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) and the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) – as a basis for evaluating the dependency of welfare and its major engine, the economy, on natural resources. Increasing welfare appears to require a disproportionate use of resources. Strong and increasing dependency on resources at the global level and in giant countries such as China and India may have serious implications for current sustainability policies and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Sustainable development requires not only the use of sustainable energy resources, but also the efficient use of all energy resources. The latter should be reached by considering the concept of energy as well as exergy - the true magnitude of thermodynamic losses. Exergy describes the quality of an energy flow as the percentage that can be completely transformed into any other form of energy. Reduction of exergy losses represents a more efficient use of energy resources, which is essential in the long run, but it is not captured by standard energy costs, which are crucial in the short run. In this paper, exergy analysis is used in the context of a multi-carrier energy district to match the supply and demand not only in quantity but also in quality. The innovative contribution of this paper is the offering of a trade-off between reducing exergy losses and energy costs, thereby attaining sustainability of the energy district. A mixed-integer programming problem considering several energy devices is formulated to minimize a weighted sum of exergy losses and energy costs while satisfying time-varying user demands. The problem is solved by branch-and-cut. Numerical results demonstrate that the optimized operation of the energy devices makes the energy district sustainable in terms of exergy efficiency and costs.

Abstract In order to deliver the European energy and climate objectives to 2050, significant changes are essential in the building sector, especially regarding the existing stock. Indeed, there is a huge potential for action, also regarding historic buildings. In this regard, today the question is: how to combine the building protection requirements and the application of energy efficiency measures? This paper tries to answer, evaluating if the refurbishment of historic architectures, in order to achieve very low energy need, is possible and economically feasible. More in detail, the applicability of the cost-optimal methodology (EPBD Recast 2010/31/EU) for historic buildings is discussed, by adopting the macroeconomic perspective, in order to take into account of the energy, environmental and economic impacts of about 60 packages of energy efficiency measures. The study is aimed to introduce a methodological approach to define reference buildings for historic architectures, through in-situ investigation of structural and energy peculiarities and, as real case study, the refurbishment of an Italian building of the XV century is presented. Moreover, guidelines are proposed to properly select energy efficiency measures, according to a point of view of cost-optimality. Conservation, aesthetical requirements, structural and energy issues are considered, as well as the incidence of all economic factors.