Search results for "Energy Policy"

The Impact of the Poland Foreign Trade On Its Real CO2 Emissions

2017

CO2 emissions are a global problem. This means that nothing or very little will change if only particular countries are involved. The purpose of this paper is the attempt to show the real CO2 emissions of the Poland as well as the impact of its trade on CO2 emissions in other countries in the world and in the EU in 2015. This study was conducted on the group of countries that are the major emitters of CO2 in the world including most of the EU members. Actual CO2 emissions were achieved by applying the actual emission factor. This takes into account the transfer of CO2 in export products and services as well as those imported by particular countries. It has turned out that the real CO2 emiss…

University campuses as small-scale models of cities: Quantitative assessment of a low carbon transition path

2019

Abstract The energy efficiency interventions and rehabilitation actions regarding university campuses are characterized by an emblematic impact, representing significant examples of good practices that a given community could adopt, even at the city level. Starting from the idea that campuses may be regarded as small scale models of cities, a quantitative method for estimating to which extent the adoption of a given set of interventions by a municipality could contribute to make such city close to a nearly zero energy profile is proposed. To accomplish this task, the study considers the low carbon transition path of the campus of the University of Palermo and applies a simple method that, i…

Environmental assessment of 2030 electricity generation scenarios in Sicily: An integrated approach

2020

Abstract This paper deals with the environmental assessment of two electricity scenarios in Sicily, for 2030, characterized by a high exploitation of renewable energy sources in order to quantify the potential contribution of the local strategies in the achievement of the European climate policies and the potential improvement in the future electricity mix, compared to the current one (2014). In order to match these goals, authors integrate the Life Cycle Assessment with a scenario analysis. The future electricity mix scenarios, characterized by a share of renewables (57% for 2030-BS scenario and 51% for 2030-DS scenario) show a reduction of the greenhouse gases emissions per kWh of electri…

Life-Cycle Assessment Applied to Future Scenarios of Electricity Generation in Sicily

2018

Fighting global warming and increasing the energy security are some of the most relevant objectives of the European energy policy. Thus, defining potential low carbon pathways for the energy sector is of paramount importance in order to identify strategies with the lowest impact on climate. This paper presents an overview of environmental assessment of future electricity scenarios in Sicily (Italy), for 2020 and 2030, characterized by a high exploitation of renewable energy sources. Authors apply the Life Cycle Assessment methodology, according to the standard of the ISO 14040 series, in order to evaluate the environmental impacts of electricity generation in the future scenarios in compari…

The applicability of the indicators proposed by the European and national regulatory framework for the verification of the advancement of the plans: …

2014

Indicators are essential operational tools for the preparation of plans, to monitor their progress and for the ex-post verification of the results achieved. As it is known, there is a large corpus of indicators, both at Community and national Italian level, to which designers and planners can refer. However, it remains to verify the effectiveness of general validity parameters in describing the progress of the implementation of plans, which must be necessarily compared with more limited territorial situations. This paper addresses this problem, with reference to the Energy and Environmental Plan of the Sicilian Region (PEARS), comparing the themes proposed at European (Eurostat) and the Ita…

Environmental effects of energy policy in sicily: The role of renewable energy

2007

The saving of primary energy from fossil fuels and the promotion of exploitation of renewable sources are two of the most relevant goals to be achieved in order to match the climate protection target fixed by the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. For Italy, the commitment is the reduction of the greenhouse emissions by 6.5% below 1990 levels over the commitment period 2008–2012. It requires the introduction of suitable political strategies and programmes aimed to establish a sustainable energy system together with the application of a set of actions either at national scale, either at regional one. This study presents the results of a survey in the context of the Regione Sicilia about the potential s…

THE POTENTIAL OF RENEWABLE ENERGIES IN SICILY FOR WATER DESALINATION APPLICATIONS

2007

A bottom-up method for evaluating the whole energy demand of large residential building stocks: an application to a regional scale

2013

In this paper a method is described, originally conceived during the compilation of the Energy and Environmental Regional Plan of Sicily, aimed to: a) set up a lay-out model of an overall regional residential estate into a certain number of different building and heating system types; b) calculate the energy needs of every single type according to the procedures established by the national and European regulations; The method is particularly designed to evaluate the possible energy savings from the implementation of different interventions concerning the envelope and the HVAC systems to the various building types. The method, although based on several assumptions, shows to be reliable enoug…

Explaining the Formation Rates of Post-Communist Interest Organizations: Density Dependence and Political Opportunity Structure

2020

This article presents an analysis of the formation of organized interest groups in the post-communist context and organizational populations over time. We test two theories that shed doubt on whether vital rates of interest groups are explained by individual incentives, namely, the political opportunity structure and population ecology theory. Based on an analysis of the energy policy and higher education policy organizations active at the national level in Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia, we find that while the period of democratic and economic transition indeed opened up the opportunity structure for organizational formations, it by no means presented a clean slate. Communist-era successor…

An analysis of feed’in tariffs for solar PV in six representative countries of the European Union

2014

Abstract In this paper, after a brief review on the main support policies for Photovoltaic (PV) systems in Europe, the specific situations of six representative countries (France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain and the U.K.) are examined, with the purpose of highlighting the main differences in the implementation of the feed’in tariff (FiT) support policies adopted for PV systems. In particular, a comparison based on the calculation of economic indexes, as the Discounted Cash Flows (DCF), the Pay-Back-Period (PBP), the Net Present Value (NPV) and the Internal Rate of Return (IRR), for different sized PV systems shows that a specific FiT can sometimes be inconvenient for the producer and that…