Energy Equalization and the Case of the “nZEB Hotels”

Giuffrida, Salvatore; Nocera, Francesco; Trovato, Maria Rosa; Napoli, Grazia; Barbaro, S.

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-48279-4_118

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…A house-city-landscape system is made by the formal unity and coexistence of modes of dwelling, the interaction of the latter with the urban evolution and the rules that make a settled community efficient. Accordingly, several measures concern building and energy retrofitting [29,30], as well as the enhancement of "public beauty" [31,32] in the prospect of both the urban community's identity strengthening and social-territorial inclusion, with specific attention to the marginal inner areas and the system of the smaller ancient villages [33].…”

Section: The House-city-landscape System From a Green Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental Identities and the Sustainable City. The Green Roof Prospect for the Ecological Transition

et al. 2022

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This research deals with the issue of the recovery of the historic urban fabric with a view towards ecological transition, nowadays considered the preferable direction of sustainability for the reform of the house–city–landscape system. The massive incentives provided by the Italian government for sustainable building, in view of the post-pandemic economic recovery, risk being reduced to mere support for the real estate sector, which turns the financial transfer from the public into an increase in asset value for the private sector. Such an incentive system could contradict the original function of the city, which is to be the privileged place for social communication and the creation of the identity of settled communities. A process of property development that disregards the distribution of income favors the most valuable property, thus increasing the socioeconomic distance between centrality and marginality. The latter is a condition that often characterizes the parts of the historic city affected by extensive phenomena of physical and functional obsolescence of the built heritage, and it is less capable of attracting public funding. The increase of building decay and social filtering-down accelerates the loss and involution of neighborhood identities; the latter constitutes the psycho-social energy that helps preserve the physical, functional and anthropological integrity of the city, due to the differences that make its parts recognizable. This study, with reference to a neighborhood in the historic city of Syracuse (Italy), proposes a model of analysis, evaluation and planning of interventions on the buildings’ roofs, aimed at defining the best strategy for ecological–environmental regeneration. The model presented allows one to generate a multiplicity of alternative strategies that combine different uses of roofs: from the most sustainable green roofs, but that are less cost-effective from the identity and landscape point of view; to the most efficient photovoltaic roofs from the energy–environmental point of view; and up to the most cost-effective ones, the vertical extensions with an increase in building volume. The proposed tool is an inter-scalar multidimensional valuation model that connects the multiple eco-socio-systemic attitudes of individual buildings to the landscape, identity, energy–environmental and economic overall dimensions of the urban fabric and allows one to define and compare multiple alternative recovery hypotheses, evaluating their potential impacts on the built environment. The model allows the formation of 100 different strategies, which are internally coherent and differently satisfy the above four perspectives, and it provides the preferable ones for each of the five approaches practiced. The best strategy characterizes most green roofs, 427 out of 1075 building units, 277 blue roofs, 121 green–blue roofs and 46 grey roofs.

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Section: The House-city-landscape System From a Green Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental Identities and the Sustainable City. The Green Roof Prospect for the Ecological Transition

et al. 2022

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“…The foresting of strategies and actions to make urban environments and buildings more sustainable, both in the private and public sectors, is a cornerstone of the European Union's long-term vision for a climate-neutral economy. Economic and financial feasibility analysis of energy efficiency measures on the building, district and city scale have been widely applied to the evaluation of energy retrofit projects for near-zero energy buildings (NZEB) and various types of existing buildings [8][9][10][11], as well as for the definition of best urban energy scenarios [12,13], also in the presence of public incentives and supporting public decisions with multi-criteria models [14,15].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy Communities in Urban Areas: Comparison of Energy Strategy and Economic Feasibility in Italy and Spain

Barbaro

Napoli

2023

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Energy communities using renewable energy sources directly contributes to reduction of climate change gas emissions and energy consumption in the European Union. In addition, energy communities enable citizens to transform from (passive) consumers to prosumers (active consumers and producers) and to play a proactive role in the deployment of energy transition in urban areas. As the transposition of European rules about energy communities into the national laws of EU Member States is very articulated and differentiated, this study proposes a framework to analyze and compare regulatory and financial instruments. This framework is applied to the analysis of the cases of Italy and Spain as representative of European states in which collective actions in the energy sector are not very common, with the aim of highlighting the main critical issues affecting the effectiveness of energy transition strategies and assessing the economic feasibility of energy communities. Based on analysis of regulations and procedures, including at the local level, it appears that municipalities play an important role as promoters of initiatives among citizen communities, while complex bureaucratic procedure is the most critical issue in both countries and can significantly hinder the spread of energy communities. With respect to the different financial incentives available for the formation of energy communities in Italy and Spain, a few cases studies are hypothesized, calculating the most relevant cost-effectiveness indicators, e.g., Net Present Value. It turns out that a project with the same characteristics achieves greater economic feasibility in Italy than in Spain, depending on the type and size of incentives set by national laws and, above all, that financial incentives are necessary to make the formation of energy communities cost-effective and thus to achieve direct citizen involvement in energy transition actions.

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Towards a participatory energy transition. Critical issues and potentials of regulatory and financial instruments for Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) in Italy

Barbaro,

Napoli

2024

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The energy transition towards an economic model based on energy from renewable sources is considered a priority of strategic importance for the development of the European Union and Italy. In this context, Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) represent an opportunity to accelerate the decarbonisation process, to increase energy self-consumption and to replace centralised and hierarchical power plants with distributed and collaborative ones. This study aims to analyse how decarbonisation objectives are incorporated into national and regional regulatory and financial instruments that support the establishment of RECs. Starting from the comparison between the characteristics of REC and those of other energy community models with respect to a plurality of spheres (specifically, environmental, legal, economic-financial, technical, social and administrative spheres), the study provides a systematised framework of the advantages/disadvantages that influence the decision to invest in setting up a REC, and identifies the main critical issues that must be differentially addressed by the promoters, depending on whether they are public or private actors, assessing them through a system of nomenclators obtained following a focus group of experts. Furthermore, the analysis of regulations and available data on active RECs showed that Local Administrations play a central role in the dissemination of RECs, but also that the implementation of a sustainable and inclusive energy transition in the territories is hindered by a low level of social participation due to lack of knowledge of the benefits provided by RECs as well as actual difficulties for citizens to access REC projects, especially in their role as promoters.

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Energy Equalization and the Case of the “nZEB Hotels”

Cited by 3 publications

References 20 publications

Environmental Identities and the Sustainable City. The Green Roof Prospect for the Ecological Transition

Environmental Identities and the Sustainable City. The Green Roof Prospect for the Ecological Transition

Energy Communities in Urban Areas: Comparison of Energy Strategy and Economic Feasibility in Italy and Spain

Towards a participatory energy transition. Critical issues and potentials of regulatory and financial instruments for Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) in Italy

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