Green buildings and design for adaptation: strategies for renovation of the built environment

The recent EU Directives 2010/31 and 2012/27 provide standards of nearly zero energy buildings for new constructions, aiming at a better quality of the built environment through the adoption of high-performance solutions. In the near future, cities are expected to be the main engine of development while bearing the impact of population growth: new challenges such as increasing energy efficiency, reducing maintenance costs of buildings and infrastructures, facing the effects of climate change and adjusting on-going and future impacts, require smart and sustainable approaches. To improve the capability of adaptation to dynamics of transformation, buildings and districts have to increase their resilience, assumed as ‘the capacity to adapt to changing conditions and to maintain or regain functionality and vitality in the face of stress or disturbance’ (Wilson A., Building Resilience in Boston, Boston Society of Architects, 2013). This paper describes the research methodology, developed by the Department of Architecture, a research unit of Technology for Architecture, to perform the assessment of resilience of existing buildings, as well as the outcomes of its application within Bologna urban context. This methodology focuses on the design for adaptation of social housing buildings, aiming at predicting their expected main impacts (energy consumption, emissions, efficiency, urban quality and environmental sustainability) and at developing models for renovation

Il federalismo in sanità: opportunità e rischi tra finanziamento, equità ed assistenza

Federalism in Italy arised beginning '90, pushed bipartisanly from establishment in order to contrast the succesfull poll of northern league party. Being about 80% of the regions budget for healthcare, federalism had its hard impact on it. Regions can manage autonomously their healthcare organization, adding to the State financial resources own money earning from other their services or coming from local taxes, on condition that they provide the State LEA (Essential Level of Assistance). That means a high level of responsabilization for local government for reaching a higher level of efficiency in allocation of resources and organizational models of production and erogation of healthcare, beside a better ability to catch local healthcare demand. Even if now the sharing of State financial resources are agreed between all regions and Government, it's not clear for the future wheter each region will have to procure its own finance, introducing many problems for those southern regions unable to substain theirselves. It has still to be defined wheter and how reach regions will have to transfer part of their resources to the poor ones. That means a risk of iniquity of level in healthcare provision among regions of the same country, generating possible social conflict. Therefore federalism now has from a hand the opportunity to better tail healthcare on each local demand and, on the other hand, it risks to introduce social disparity and conflicts

Determinants of internal carbon pricing

Action against climate change is urgent and requires the participation of firms. The progressive internalization of carbon costs by firms is essential in the transition to a low-carbon economy. Internal carbon pricing is an emerging set of practices voluntarily adopted by companies to embed climate footprint in operations and business models. We explore the factors that explain the adoption of internal carbon prices (ICP) among global companies reporting to the Carbon Disclosure Project between 2015 and 2017. We specifically test whether the macroeconomic, regulatory, industry, and firm-specific characteristics affect the disclosed level of the ICPs. Results show that the ICPs depend to a large extent on the national climate policy, country's development, industry, and corporate governance. Furthermore, context explain more the differences in ICP than industry and firm-specific characteristics. Thus uncertainties around countries' climate policy hampers carbon pricing in business. These findings shed light on the factors that contribute to the dissemination of carbon pricing in society.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Creating legitimacy for climate accounting in business: determinants of internal carbon pricing

Companies are increasingly concerned with climate change in a context of rising public awareness and of an emerging global climate governance.The legitimacy theory posits that companies use communication strategies, such as social and environmental reporting, to maintain and gain societal acceptance and influence perceptions (Welbeck et al, 2017; Unerman and Chapman, 2014; Deegan, 2002; Lindblom, 1993; Dowling and Pfeffer, 1975). Companies with low environmental performances, in particular, tend to implement larger compensation measures and disclose more environmental information to counteract potentially higher pressure from the socio-political context (Cho and Patten, 2007; Darrell and Schwartz, 1997). Following the legitimacy strategies that have been reported in the literature (e.g., Lindblom, 1993; Suchman, 1995; O’Dwyer et al., 2011), corporate climate strategies can serve as a response to conform to changes in public expectations or as an action to create new audiences and to influence societal beliefs around new practices.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

TRANSIENCE AS A DESIGN CHALLENGE. ITALIAN RADICAL NARRATIVES ABOUT THE ROLE OF DESIGN PROCESSES IN/FOR THE INCORPOREAL TRANSFORMATIONS OF CITIES (1969-1974)

The capacity of design culture to interpret changes and mediate different fields of research and action by integrating material, immaterial values and experiences, is becoming increasingly relevant, considering the deep transformations generated by the contemporary crisis, wars and migrations. The concept of transience therefore appears to be the only condition and dimension we can design, influence, shape, test, experiment and consume, but also use to narrate the not-linear relationship between design - as a culture of doing, producing, mediating, building relations, anticipating - and the transformations in cities and societies. This paper therefore intends to propose a transverse and inclusive interpretation of transience mediated by design, examining narratives of design-centred approaches in Italy, considering performative and temporary expressions as designed artefacts, with an influence on the development of urban spaces, and where spontaneous initiatives have been expression of latent processes of creativity and culture. The period under examination primarily covers the decades of 1960s and 1970s, a period in which the search for overlapping between disciplinary boundaries, the aggression of the overall vision of the project - which proposes a circularity between scales - and the climate of protest with movements and activism, brought with them the need for change. Moreover, the relationship between design, crisis and sustainability was a transversal theme that led design cultures to weave collaboration with different forms of knowledge and to explore transverse processes and methods. The design discourse around sustainability continues, today, to be fuelled by new instances of triple transition pervading the European landscape, in a process of continuous refinement of methods and practices that introduces new tools, with an eye to digital and new technologies, cross-fertilised by a variety of disciplines, because the forces conditioning change in contemporary and future societies are many and sometimes unexpected

Market-pull policies to promote renewable energy: a quantitative assessment of tendering implementation

Policymakers ideally select the support mechanism that better foments renewable energy production at the lowest cost to comply with international climate agreements. Currently, tendering is the fastest rising scheme. Yet a quantitative assessment of its performance in the literature is missing. We assess the effect of the introduction of auctions in accelerating the addition of renewable capacity through three econometric models: fixed-effects multivariate regression, statistical matching and synthetic control. The dataset includes 20 developed countries, spanning from 2004 to 2014, and both macroeconomic and policy drivers. Results show that tendering has the strongest effects to promote net renewable capacity comparing to other mechanisms like feed-in tariffs. Countries implementing tendering on average have a higher addition of net capacity of renewables in the order of 1000-2000 MW annually. The positive effect of tenders is clearer when analyzing with synthetic controls the case of Italy: while tendering enhances the deployment of renewables, policy instability jeopardizes the sustainability of tendering’s impact.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Do crowdfunding returns reward risk? Evidences from clean-tech projects

The growing literature on crowdfunding has mostly focused on the determinants of campaigns success, as well as on the legal and macroeconomic drivers of the crowdfunding diffusion as a mean to finance innovative projects. Still there are scant evidences on whether the returns for crowdfunders are consistent with the risk profile of crowdfunded projects. By studying 365 European clean-tech projects which raised capital via crowdfunding, we show that once the country risk has been accounted for, the returns are not consistent with the risks related to the technology adopted by the projects. Behavioral factors like bounded rationality or the cultural dimension of investors may explain this apparent mispricing of risks. While projects' returns are, on average, negatively related to risks, we find that projects offering better risk-adjusted returns attract relatively larger average contributions. Our results have important implications for understanding the drivers of crowdfunding returns and its sustainability, and particularly for its diffusion as an instrument to foster the transition to a low-carbon economy.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Crowdfunding for sustainability ventures

Sustainable entrepreneurship is raising and already providing a response to environmental, social and economic issues. However, it is still at disadvantage when seeks funding from traditional providers of capital. Crowdfunding has opened a new possibility for closing such funding gap. This study investigates the role of crowdfunding as a creative source of capital for ventures with sustainable orientation. The analysis seeks to understand to what extent project characteristics influence the ability to raise funds on the world leading reward-crowdfunding platform, and, importantly, to explain their survival post-campaign. Results show that the perceived sustainable mission positively influences the outcome of the campaign. An average survival rate over 70% after one year of operations suggests the creation of healthy sustainability ventures through crowdfunding. Furthermore, a higher percentage of female co-founders improves the chances of success during and after the crowdfunding campaign. The paper discusses implications for the success of crowdfunding campaigns and their development post-campaign in sustainable entrepreneurship.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio