Su alcuni punti nodali della questione ucraina (XIX-XXI secolo)

The chapter analyses the \u201cUkrainian Question\u201d, through examples of old and new analyses on Ukrainian identity, starting from an essay written by the British historian A.J. Toynbee in 1916, when the result of the WW1 and the future of Ukraine was still uncertain. Toynbee\u2019s assumptions are compared with interpretations given by various authors from 19th up to 21st centuries, showing that the crux of the matter is still debated by conteporary analysts. In conclusion, it is expressed the hope that the new presidency could take significant steps in order to consolidate the Ukrainian sovereignity in a peaceful perspective of democratic development

Contributi sui rapporti italo-russi

l volume Contributi sui rapporti italo-russi ha origine nell’utilità di pubblicare in italiano gli interventi e gli atti – già editi in lingua originale – del Forum Italo-Russo su Prospettive comuni di ricerca. Italia e Russia tra modernizzazione e stagnazione, organizzato presso la Sapienza Università di Roma grazie alla sinergia tra il Centro interdipartimentale di Ricerca per la Cooperazione con l’Eurasia, il Mediterraneo e l’Africa Sub-sahariana della Sapienza, il Centro di Studi Russi e la Fondazione Russkiy Mir. La vivacità del dibattito suscitato dalle relazioni tra i partecipanti all’incontro, l’interesse dei contributi e l’ampiezza dell’arco temporale esaminato hanno così permesso a questa pubblicazione di assumere la dimensione di un vero e proprio saggio sull’andamento delle relazioni tra Mosca e Roma dal XX secolo agli albori del XXI secolo (dall'introduzione).The volume Contributions to the Italo-Russian relations has its origin in the usefulness to publish in Italian the presentations and the contributions – already edited in original language – of the Italian-Russian Forum on the Mutual Perspectives of Research. Italy and Russia between Modernization and Stagnation, organized at Sapienza University of Rome thanks to the collaboration between the Research Center for the Cooperation with Eurasia, Mediterranean and Sub-Saharan Africa of Sapienza, the Center of Russian Studies and the foundation Russkiy Mir. The liveliness of the debate generated by the relations between the participants at the meeting, the interest of the contributions and the amplitude of the time period examined allowed this publication to assume a dimension of a real and authentic text on the development of relations between Moscow and Rome from the twentieth century to the dawn of the twenty-first century (from the introduction)

Enabling factors for the development of mini-grid solutions in Mozambique: A PESTLE-based analysis

Electricity is crucial for each country's economic and social development. More than half of the population in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) lack access to energy, which has dire consequences for the local population's living conditions, as well as affecting the local economy and increasing poverty. Renewable energy-based mini-grid (REBM) systems are the promising solution to mitigate the issue of energy access in rural areas, however, the expansion of renewable energy (RE) systems and the rate of energy access are both advancing at a slow pace. This study used PESTLE analysis (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental) in the context of Mozambique, a SSA country, to identify the most important categories and factors to support decision-making processes by breaking down existing barriers and hurdles in the energy sector enabling them to plan and implement measures, subdivided in primary, secondary and tertiary for the development of REBM in remote settlements. Even though PESTLE analysis is rather often worldwide applied to the energy sector, its application to the Sub-Saharan context is rare, while its application to the Mozambique energy sector is absent in scientific literature. Besides, within our study, energy experts from different professional backgrounds and nationalities have been interviewed using an online questionnaire: 62 energy experts (48 Africans, and 14 Non-African) from 14 different countries assessed the categories and factors. The experts questioned identified the political category as the most crucial for policy-makers to prioritize, with the top three global weighting factors being, Clear Government policies (plan, regulation, priority, strategy) 5.79%, National financial scheme for RES investments 4.93%, and cost of investment 4.86%. The findings can support policy-makers breakdown barriers in the energy sector, planning and implementing measures for the REBM development, and contribute to achieving the SDG7 target

Planning third generation minigrids: Multi-objective optimization and brownfield investment approaches in modelling village-scale on-grid and off-grid energy systems

Access to reliable and sustainable electricity is still precluded for a large share of global population living in rural areas of developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Hybrid microgrids are considered a suitable solution for providing affordable and reliable access to electricity to isolated communities. Properly planning and sizing such systems is although an aspect that can greatly influence the sustainability of the intervention, and the arrival to the market of the third generation minigrids poses new challenges to the process. Three main challenges are identified as pivotal for the proper sizing of new generation microgrids: arrival of the main grid, inappropriateness of Net Present Cost as only objective function in the strategy selection process, and necessity to operate on already existing minigrids. Such aspects are addressed in this work by proposing a methodological advancement to an existing open-source microgrid sizing model: a grid outage model alongside the definition of new constraints and variables for the optimization problem with grid-connected microgrids, a multi-objective optimization option, and a brown-field optimization option. The new version of the model is tested on real life case studies in rural Rwanda (greenfield) and Mozambique (brownfield), proving the profitability of grid-connected and grid-extension solutions for sufficiently low connection distances. Sensitivity analyses are performed to assess variations in system size, cost and CO2 emissions with respect to microgrid and grid connection parameters