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Cities consume over 75% of natural resources, produce over 50% of global waste, and emit 60–80% of greenhouse gases. The scenario that by 2050 two thirds of the world population will live in cities, highlights how cities are still responsible for the growing consumption characterized by linear economic processes, with the production of various types of waste. In this unsustainable framework, the Circular Economy offers the opportunity to shape the urban system by means of rethinking the possibility to produce and use goods and services, exploring new ways to ensure long-term prosperity. The Circular City paradigm contains in fact all the principles of the Circular Economy: recovery, recycling, and sharing. In particular, Circular City also introduces actions related to the development of renewable energy communities, use of green materials, CO2 absorption approaches, and Proximity Cities. This work aims to develop a methodology to build a composite index (Circular City Index) capable of measuring the degree of implementation of urban policies that may enable an ecological transition of public assets. Circular City Index was applied to the military cluster of the city of Cagliari (Sardinia, Italy), a significant case study to guide circular policies in public properties for civil and military uses.

The EU proposal on liberalisation of the energy market has been widely debated in policy, stakeholder and academic circles both for its content and the potential consequences to the gas and electricity markets. However, little has been said about the empirical evidence produced by the European commission to support this legislative package. No research effort has been devoted to analysing the impact assessment document that accompanies the third legislative package. Since the impact assessment system has been in place, there have been concerns regarding quality and adequateness, especially when considering alternative policy options, including stakeholder opinions and quantifying costs, benefits and risks. This paper analyses how these crucial issues were factored into the impact assessment on the third legislative package. It investigates the interaction between the legislative proposals on energy liberalisation and its Impact Assessment.

Concerns about climate change, pollution and energy security have prompted policies aiming at replacing fossil fuels (in heating and cooling, and transportation) with electricity, presumably generated from renewable sources. Climate change itself is expected to increase the demand for cooling in buildings, which is generally met with electricity-powered air conditioning. We use hourly electricity demand from a sample of Italian residences over a full year to examine how sensitive residential demand is to temperature. Our regression model includes a rich set of household-by-time fixed effects to control for dwelling characteristics and equipment, family composition, work and business schedules, demand for lighting, and seasonal habits other than temperature. These allows us to separate the effect of temperature from the demand for lighting and from other seasonal effects that may be correlated with temperature, but are not temperature. We find that demand stays within a relatively narrow range (and is thus relatively flat) up to temperatures of about 24.4° C, and increases sharply with temperature thereafter. We find that temperature accounts for a very small share of daily electricity demand. Only on exceptionally hot summer days can temperature account for 12% of hourly electricity use.