• Energy Research

Making public buildings smarter and more energy efficient requires tailored solutions to overcome the main barriers in the implementation of suitable technology options in a large variety of building types. The PrioritEE project aims to strengthen the policy-making and strategic planning competences of local and regional public authorities in the energy management of Municipal Public Buildings (MPB). This paper focuses on the PrioritEE toolbox and, in particular, on the Decision Support Tool (DST) for assessing the cost-effectiveness of a predefined set of Energy Efficiency (EE) and Renewable Energy Sources (RES) measures and prioritize investments in terms of three main indicators: costs, energy savings and avoided CO2 emissions. Some preliminary results obtained by the application of the DST in three pilots show the main advantages for a municipality to use this tool and the wider applicability both within and outside the Mediterranean area.

Renovation of public buildings is a strategic goal for both the revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) and Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) included in The Clean Energy for all Europeans policy package and has been included in several National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) drafts. Pursuing the policies outlined by these national long-term roadmaps will require coordinated actions at local level in order to overcome existing barriers (e.g., lack of financial resources and technical expertise, low energy awareness), and take advantage of current opportunities (technological innovation, smart energy management, EU/national/regional funding, etc.). The Interreg MED project "Prioritize energy efficiency measures in public buildings: a decision support tool for regional and local public authorities - PrioritEE" (2016-2019) aimed at strengthening the policy-making and strategic planning competences of local and regional public authorities in the energy management of municipal public buildings (MPBs). To this end, a comprehensive methodological approach, the socalled PrioritEE toolbox, was developed, tested, refined and transferred in five Mediterranean pilot cases, targeting more than two hundred MPBs (among offices, schools, cultural and social centres, sports facilities and swimming pools) characterized by different built areas and construction dates. The toolbox includes a Technology Analytical Database and a Decision Support Tool (DST) developed ad-hoc to prioritize Energy Efficiency (EE) and Renewable Energy Source (RES) investments in MPBs, selecting the best suited measures in terms of energy savings, return of investment, etc. The DST also serves as an online repository of public buildings which gathers and makes available on a common platform all information about buildings commonly split among several documents. A comprehensive set of key indicators is an integral part of the DST and allows to compare different scenarios of interventions and to monitor energy consumption, assessing the effects of the proposed strategies. Moreover, the toolbox includes also How-to Briefs, easy-to-use brief guidebooks on a wide range of topics related to the energy-efficient renovation of MPBs, and a Repository of Good Practices to enhance sustainable energy awareness and foster behavioural changes in MPBs. All these components are available through the project website which constitutes an easy-toaccess Open data & knowledge access infrastructure. The final output of this experience, the so-called PrioritEE toolbox, allowed to define five Local Action Plans to improve EE and RES use in municipal public buildings in line with the Covenant of Mayors format of the Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan (SECAP) for this specific sector. Stakeholders involvement in capacity buildings activities (local workshops, training activities, case study exchange visits) was assured throughout the project activities, and also communication and changing behaviour initiatives (mainly through living labs) specifically focusing users of public buildings (in particular, schools and municipal offices). The presentation will provide a critical evaluation of the main outcomes of this collaborative effort, describing the main results achieved, the lessons learnt, and the main common strategies and policy recommendations deriving from this experience which focused on the Mediterranean area but can be replicated across all Europe.

Cities significantly contribute to climate change while at the same time have government capacity to efficiently act in the fields of mitigation and adaptation. Their climate capacity is being increasingly recognized by international institutions and has been pointed out as crucial in the multi-level government scenario of the European Union (EU). Addressing the challenges of climate change at urban level is a complex issue which requires a holistic approach to strategic urban planning. Understanding why and how cities start action can help to identify the barriers they face when addressing climate change, and how national governments, regions and international bodies can support local authorities in their climate fight. This work aims to contribute to the provision of knowledge necessary to have a better and deeper insight in urban climate action. The study investigates the state-of-art of urban climate plans in two countries, Spain and Italy, which share similarities on many levels (i.e. cultural, geographical, climate vulnerabilities, urban configurations and institutional framework). The research analyses 26 Spanish cities and 32 Italian cities included in the Eurostat Urban Audit (UA), focusing on the actions taken by big and medium municipalities in reducing their contribution to climate change and to become more resilient to changing weather patterns. The results of the analysis show a trend towards an increasing awareness on climate mitigation (highly focused on energy efficiency and the promotion of cleaner energy sources), while adaptation remains an incipient local policy area in both countries. The analysis identifies also the beneficial influence of national and international climate city networks. Tema. Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment, 2015: ECCA 2015 - Smart and Resilient Cities. Ideas and Practices from the South of Europe

This paper investigates the energy system of the Basilicata region (southern Italy) to highlight, through a scenario analysis, its possible future development in compliance with the European Commission's long-term vision. The IEA-ETSAP methodology was utilized to model and analyse the Basilicata energy system in a business-as-usual scenario, based on the assumptions of the 2010 Regional Energy and Environmental Policy Plan, and in two low-carbon scenarios, decarbonisation and high energy efficiency, which, in line with the long-term European strategy, foresee an 85% carbon dioxide emission reduction and a 20% energy efficiency increase in 2050. The results highlight that electricity production from renewable energy sources (in particular wind energy), strongly supported by the regional policy, goes beyond the Basilicata Regional Energy-Environmental Plan forecast, with a further increase in the decarbonisation scenarios. In addition, solar thermal and highly efficient technologies are adopted in commercial and residential end-use sectors. An additional 9% reduction in energy consumption is achieved in the high energy efficiency scenario by passive houses. The proposed approach shows the usefulness of a modelling framework typically used for national and supranational analyses to support regional authorities in their decision-making process to obtain results in line with the European and national strategies. Application to the Basilicata region shows the usefulness of a consolidated framework for policy assessment at a local scale to assess regional contribution to the achievement of national climate mitigation targets that tend towards climate neutrality.

The Circular Economy Package issued by the European Commission in December 2015, fosters a radical change in production processes in order to facilitate the transition from a linear economic approach to a circular paradigm, preserving resources, and stimulating a sustainable economic growth. This study focuses on a prospective analysis carried out to develop and apply the circular economy concepts to optimise resource management of an automotive manufacturing plant. The aim is to identify the productive steps with the highest energy efficiency potential and prioritize measures and technologies to reduce carbon emissions and enhance energy saving, recycling, and reuse of waste materials. To this issue a partial equilibrium model has been developed based on the ETSAP Integrated MARKAL-EFOM System (TIMES) paradigm. Such a model allows a comprehensive evaluation of current energy and material flows, from supply to demand, focusing on tri-generation of cooling, heat and power (CCHP) and energy consumption within different shops (press, body, paint and assembly) and manufacturing process technologies. Moreover, a scenario analysis will allow analysing the technical-economic feasibility and environmental sustainability of such an exemplar automotive plant under different user-defined constraints (e.g. energy prices, technologies availability, environmental policy limitations, etc.) in order to identify minimum cost configurations of the entire production system in contrasting scenarios. A cost-benefit assessment will integrate the analysis of results by scenario in order to identify the "robust" strategies" for the achievement of relevant energy and environmental targets as well as to define the energy-technology roadmaps by scenario and the R & D priorities.

The European Union’s 2030 climate and energy policy and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development underline the commitment to mitigate climate change and reduce its impacts by supporting sustainable use of resources. This commitment has become stricter in light of the ambitious climate neutrality target set by the European Green Deal for 2050. Water, Energy and Food are the key variables of the “Nexus Thinking” which face the sustainability challenge with a multi-sectoral approach. The aim of the paper is to show the methodological path toward the implementation of an integrated modeling platform based on the Nexus approach and consolidated energy system analysis methods to represent the agri-food system in a circular economy perspective (from the use of water, energy, biomass, and land to food production). The final aim is to support decision-making connected to climate change mitigation. The IEA-The Integrated MARKAL-EFOM System (TIMES) model generator was used to build up the Basilicata Water, Energy and Food model (TIMES-WEF model), which allows users a comprehensive evaluation of the impacts of climate change on the Basilicata agri-food system in terms of land use, yields and water availability and a critical comparison of these indicators in different scenarios. The paper focuses on the construction of the model’s Reference Energy and Material System of the TIMES model, which integrates water and agricultural commodities into the energy framework, and on the results obtained through the calibration of the model β version to statistical data on agricultural activities.