Development of renewable energy strategies for small urban areas

Abstract

The role of municipalities to foster renewable energy generation has been recently recognized and pointed out. First, their involvement comes from the fact that strategic planning at a local level is necessary due to the site-specific nature of renewable sources. Second, in the last years, the role of citizens has turned out to be a critical issue as demonstrated, for instance, by the NIMBY syndrome, suggesting local governments' participation in the process, since they can benefit by a closer connection to inhabitants. Third, the point of view of local governments, who are the institutional actors more directly involved, can help to better estimate both technical and non-technical barriers for the growth of renewable energy. Starting from the analysis of a small urban area, Corinaldo, located in Central Italy, whose electricity production from renewable sources is able to cover about 70% of the entire municipal electricity use, the present paper aims at identifying renewable energy strategies for small urban areas that can be suitable for big cities and metropolitan regions as well. First, the main energy strategies carried out by the municipality under study have been identified; second, the main barriers and measures to a much higher renewable energy penetration have been discussed. This analysis has been conducted with the aid of a specific tool, EnergyPlan, developed by the Aalborg University to evaluate energy alternatives based on renewable energy systems. Finally, general findings suitable for fostering renewable energy penetration have been pointed out. In particular, results show that the higher percentage of renewable energy on the total energy demand, which generally characterizes small urban areas, mainly derives-other than from the obvious reason related to the area dimension-from the closer Environmental Impact 265

Results of a literature review on methods for estimating buildings energy demand at district level

“…In Ref. [26] the energy demand hourly profiles for a small Italian town (Corinaldo) have been derived by scaling-down the previously determined national hourly ones [27,28]to the consumptions reported in the municipal energy balance, and adjusted for considering the local climate conditions and a future scenario. Similarly, in Ref.…”

Optimal management of renewable and fossil fuel energy systems in a smart community

“…As regards RES-E, the increase in hydroelectric production can more likely derive from micro and mini-hydroelectric plants, since there are no areas suitable to install big plants. As discussed in [23] electricity production from biomass can play an important role in Marche Region, with a positive side effect on agriculture sector, thus an interesting contribution can come from this source by 2020. It has been assumed a low increase in PV production, due to the termination of the national supporting scheme.…”