Achieving Net Zero Condominiums through Energy Community Sharing

The European energy transition process is geared toward improving the economic viability of the energy sector through its democratization, which includes enabling citizens to generate, share, and sell energy produced by renewable sources. The current directives have led to the creation of energy communities and collective self-consumption groups to engage and raise awareness among citizens, with the goal of achieving social, economic, and environmental benefits through shared renewable energy generation and consumption. In the near future, more and more of these initiatives are anticipated; therefore, innovative technological tools are necessary to assist their growth path. This research introduces a multi-criteria techno-economic simulation framework that enables the evaluation of several investment scenarios for various plant sizes and energy prices. The findings are useful during the investment planning phase as they help guide decision-making toward the objectives of economic, energy, and environmental sustainability. To evaluate the methodology, a case study of a collective self-consumption group located in a smart building in Italy is proposed. The results are discussed from statistical, technical, economic, and financial standpoints, demonstrating how the proposed approach can contribute to the development of collective self-consumption groups, risk hedging, and the goal of developing energy self-sufficiency based on the net-zero energy building concept

More Circular City in the Energy and Ecological Transition: A Methodological Approach to Sustainable Urban Regeneration

Cities consume over 75% of natural resources, produce over 50% of global waste, and emit 60–80% of greenhouse gases. The scenario that by 2050 two thirds of the world population will live in cities, highlights how cities are still responsible for the growing consumption characterized by linear economic processes, with the production of various types of waste. In this unsustainable framework, the Circular Economy offers the opportunity to shape the urban system by means of rethinking the possibility to produce and use goods and services, exploring new ways to ensure long-term prosperity. The Circular City paradigm contains in fact all the principles of the Circular Economy: recovery, recycling, and sharing. In particular, Circular City also introduces actions related to the development of renewable energy communities, use of green materials, CO2 absorption approaches, and Proximity Cities. This work aims to develop a methodology to build a composite index (Circular City Index) capable of measuring the degree of implementation of urban policies that may enable an ecological transition of public assets. Circular City Index was applied to the military cluster of the city of Cagliari (Sardinia, Italy), a significant case study to guide circular policies in public properties for civil and military uses

Écologie et conservation des papillons d’un site des pré-apennins du Piémont (nord-ouest de l’Italie)

De 1999 à 2001 nous avons étudié la faune de papillons d'un site des pré-apennins du Piémont (Italie du NO). Soixante-huit espèces ont été observées et 16 autres ont été ajoutées à partir de travaux antérieurs. Au total la faune de la zone d'étude a des caractéristiques intermédiaires entre celles de l'Europe centrale et de la région Méditerranéenne: elle est composée d'espèces plus amplement distribuées et plus mobiles que le reste de la faune italienne. Les zones de jachères récentes et anciennes montrent un nombre d'espèces significativement plus grand que celui des aires boisées et cultivées, mais nous n'avons trouvé de différence significative ni pour les caractéristiques écologiques ni pour les surfaces des aires de distribution italienne entre les diverses associations d'espèces qui peuplent des environnements différents. Seules quelques espèces ont montré des préférences significatives pour un habitat particulier, et nous n'avons pas trouvé d'association d'espèces différente selon les habitats que nous avons étudiés. Les espèces qui ont disparu ou qui sont devenues plus rares dans la zone d'étude lors des 30 dernières années ont une aire de distribution italienne plus petite et une mobilité inférieure par rapport aux espèces qui ont survécu jusqu'en 1999-2001.From 1999 to 2001 we studied the butterfly fauna of a site in the pre-Apennines of Piedmont (NW Italy). Sixty-eight species were observed, and another 16 were added from previously published works. On the whole, the fauna of the study area has intermediate characteristics between those of central Europe and the Mediterranean region, and is composed of species more wide-ranging in Italy and more mobile than the rest of the Italian fauna. Old and recent fallow habitats have significantly higher species richness than woods and cultivated areas, but we failed to find any clear difference, either in the ecological characteristics or in the Italian range-size, between the species assemblages inhabiting different habitats. Only a few species showed significant preferences for any single habitat type and different habitats were not occupied by different species assemblages. Species that disappeared or became rarer in the study area during the last 30 years had smaller Italian range-size and lower mobility than species still persisting in 1999-2001