Search results for "Tale"
showing 10 items of 6428 documents
Smart city and public lighting
2015
The smart city is increasingly becoming a concept of reference for what concerns the planning and the spatial development of cities. The concept of smart city cannot be easily standardized. It is based on a multi-service and multi-sectorial planning regarding various urban functions (energy, mobility, waste, etc.) and places them under a common denominator: the use of advanced technologies for minimizing resources consumption and simultaneously increase the quality of life of the citizens. This paper aims to give an overview on the concept of smart city and outline what, at present, are the main intervention areas considered at European level. Then the paper focuses on the public lighting t…
A review on optimization and cost-optimal methodologies in low-energy buildings design and environmental considerations
2019
Abstract The topic of low-energy buildings received a widespread and growing interest in last years, thanks to energy saving policies of developed countries. The design of a low-energy building is addressed with energy saving measures and renewable energy generation, but the correct assessment of phenomena occurring in a building usually requires to perform dynamic simulations and to analyze multiple scenarios to attain the optimal solution. The optimality of a technical solution may be subject to contrasting constraints and objectives. For this reason, designers may employ mathematical optimization techniques, a non-familiar topic to most of building designers. In this paper, a review on o…
Resource consumption and environmental impacts of the agrofood sector: life cycle assessment of italian citrus-based products
2009
Though many studies concern the agro-food sector in the EU and Italy, and its environmental impacts, literature is quite lacking in works regarding LCA application on citrus products. This paper represents one of the first studies on the environmental impacts of citrus products in order to suggest feasible strategies and actions to improve their environmental performance. In particular, it is part of a research aimed to estimate environmental burdens associated with the production of the following citrus-based products: essential oil, natural juice and concentrated juice from oranges and lemons. The life cycle assessment of these products, published in a previous paper, had highlighted sign…
Sustainable production and consumption in remote working conditions due to COVID-19 lockdown in Italy: An environmental and user acceptance investiga…
2021
Abstract In response to the disruptive changes brought upon our society by the COVID-19 pandemic, most work activities and service providers had to resort to remote working. This is credited to reduce emissions for transportation, however the role of forced confinement within dwellings, especially if not designed for hosting working stations, deserves to be properly evaluated in terms of both user acceptance and long-term environmental impact. In this work, a dedicated survey campaign is used for investigating the potential pros and cons of remote working. In more detail, logistic regression and generalized linear models are used for capturing the effect of several independent variables on …
Effects of the Italian financial crisis on the photovoltaic dissemination in a southern city
2013
Abstract The aim of this paper is to estimate how the profitability of grid-connected PV (photovoltaic) systems may vary month by month due to the changes in all parameters involved in the economic evaluation (discount rate, PV electricity selling price, inflation rate, price of PV devices etc.). The effects of these variations were investigated for a district of a city in the South Italy (Palermo). The results of the analysis provided the trend of the actual coverage of the district power demand from June 2010 to August 2012. In particular the load match index, which considers the daily energy demand covered by PV systems, ranged from almost 30% to less than 12%, which is less than the val…
Climate change and the building sector: Modelling and energy implications to an office building in southern Europe
2018
Abstract The building sector is one of the most relevant sectors in terms of generation of wealth and occupation, but it is also one of the main contributor to energy use and greenhouse gas emissions (e.g. at the European level it is currently responsible for 36% of CO2 emissions). For these reason this sector must play a key role in achieving a low-carbon economy consistent with the objective of holding the increase of the average temperature of the globe below 2 °C if compared to pre-industrial levels. In this context, the paper analyses the potential impact of climate change on the energy uses for heating and cooling in southern Europe, based on the assumptions of the latest Intergovernm…
The role of the building sector for reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gases: An Italian case study
2013
The paper presents one of the first Italian experiences assessing the effectiveness of sustainable production and consumption strategies. The authors developed an energy and environmental extended input–output model, combined with the life cycle assessment, to analyse the role of the building sector in the reduction of Italian energy consumption and CO2 emissions. In detail, the model allows to assess the energy and environmental benefits arising from the Italian tax deduction policy for energy retrofit actions of buildings. Moreover, the authors defined an original model to assess the indirect rebound effect caused by the energy retrofit actions. The outcomes of the research point out that…
Application of the Structural Decomposition Analysis to assess the indirect energy consumption and air emission changes related to Italian households…
2012
Abstract The design of sustainable production and consumption strategies and the assessment of implemented actions require to identify the driving forces that influence the trend of energy consumption and environmental impacts. For this purpose, the Structural Decomposition Analysis (SDA) was developed as a suitable methodology to analyse the driving forces of the changes in economic, energy and environmental indicators. The paper presents one of the first Italian studies that apply an energy and environmental extended input–output model, opportunely shaped to the examined context, combined with SDA. In detail, it aims at: (1) investigating the energy use and the air emissions arisen from t…
A Case-Study of Green Roof Monitoring: The Building of Council for Agricultural Research and Economics in Bagheria, (Italy)
2018
The energy saving in building goes on as an important challenge in the policy of Developed Countries. While the issue of energy building efficiency in heating season has deeply been investigated for a long time, the issue of energy building efficiency in cooling season is relatively recent. Moreover, considering the increase of electric consumption for air-conditioning in summer, mainly due to the growing quality of life, the research of technologies for reducing energy building consumption during this season becomes essential. The green roof represents a technology useful to reduce the energy consumption during the cooling season. In this work the authors report the results of a monitoring…