AT THE INAUGURATION OF KEY ENERGY THE SCENARIO ON RENEWABLES, EFFICIENCY AND MOBILITY
This afternoon, the president of Italian Exhibition Group, Lorenzo Cagnoni, opened the proceedings of the busy agenda of appointments at KEY ENERGY, being held at Rimini Expo Centre until Friday, and this year enriched by the presentation of the scenario analysis by the Energy & Strategy Group of Milan Polytechnic on the development of renewable energy, the process of requalification of real estate and the trend of sustainable mobility.
According to Vittorio Chiesa, in charge of the survey, with the current trend of the installations and the production of green energy, it will be difficult to achieve the target foreseen by the PNIEC (National Energy and Climate Plan).
´The forecasts for photovoltaic power´, explains the professor, ´show an inertial scenario in 2030, in other words with no action being taken with new support policies, of 50 TWh compared to the 75 TWh of the Plan. The same fate is in store for wind energy, with a trend scenario of 80 TWh compared to the 110 of the PNIEC.´
On matters of energy efficiency, the Milan Polytechnic analysis – which concentrated on the industrial aspect – on the contrary shows that a slackening is under way in the overall growth of the application of energy requalification to the manufacturing cycle. ´Energy efficiency progress in industry is continuing, but with less impetus than in the past´, warns Chiesa. ´This is caused by the fact that there is less will to take action on behalf of small and medium enterprises, which seem less interested than the large industrial groups were in the recent past.´
Lastly, on the trend of electric and sustainable mobility, decisive issues to face decarbonization by 2030 in an adequate manner, Chiesa emphasized the growing electrification of mobility under way throughout the world, a contradictory datum with respect to Government forecasts, which on the contrary minimize the impact of battery-driven cars in Italy. ´The indications contained in the PNIEC forecast that the number of hybrid cars should be higher than that of electric cars.´ ´2018 figures of the number of electric cars show 22,000 vehicles: only 10% use public recharging facilities, while the remainder use domestic or company recharging facilities.´
Other speakers included: Federico Testa, President of ENEA, Roberto Moneta, MD of the GSE and Luigi Ferraris, MD of Terna. The proceedings were chaired by Alessandro Marangoni, economist of Althesys, who reminded that what was necessary was ´an acceleration of the installation of renewable energies if we want to avoid the risks due to less use of coal, whose plants will shortly be switched off. It is therefore necessary to begin a rapid simplification of administrative procedure.´
EUROPEAN LEMON PROJECT, MORE EFFICIENT SOCIAL HOUSING IN EMILIA
Increasing domestic comfort and reducing energy costs in the context of public social housing. Putting together a model for financing that combines the return on investments with the energy saving achieved. This ambitious objective is at the base of Lemon, the acronym of Less Energy, More OpportuNities, a project financed by the European program Horizon 2020 whose details were revealed at Italian Exhibition Group´s Rimini Expo Centre on the opening day of Key Energy.
Of the 620 dwellings that require energy retrofitting work in the project, 68% of the dwellings identified are in the province of Reggio Emilia, while 32% are in the province of Parma.
The meeting, entitled ´Lemon – Energy efficiency as an investment´, involved four important partners in the Emilia-Romagna area: AESS (Agency for Energy and Sustainable Development), the no-profit association from Modena that coordinates the project, ACER Parma, ACER Reggio Emilia and ART-ER, a consortium with the participation of the Emilia-Romagna Region that promotes the area´s innovation by means of projects of collaboration between research and enterprises.
Piergabriele Andreoli, director of AESS explains, ´Lemon is a facilitator in the context of energy retrofitting in social housing. Our aim is to abandon the logic of retrofitting for individual buildings and undertake a vast investment plan for retrofitting the social housing in over 620 dwellings located in 44 buildings in the provinces of Parma and Reggio Emilia. We also want to accelerate investments on retrofitting and test new types of financing, integrating different financing and incentives at regional and national level.´ Teresa Bagnoli, head of strategic development of building and constructions with ART-ER, states, ´The potential impact of the Lemon project is very high for the innovative effects it can bring to the entire construction chain. The result of integrated collaboration between the territory´s stakeholders (research, public administration, local agencies, enterprises and finance institutes), the project opens up to new more effective methods for taking action on housing assets. Moreover, very often when facing work on of buildings´ energy efficiency, one forgets to consider the importance of the people, and adequately train those who will later go and live in and manage the dwellings, with the risk that all the assumed benefits and forecast performance are not achieved.´
SEARCHING FOR SEAS SUITED TO GENERATING ENERGY IN THE MEDITERRANEAN: THE MAESTRALE PROJECT
A project that aims at identifying the areas of the sea most suited to generating energy using the waves. This is the objective of the European Maestrale project, which in particular involves the countries of the Mediterranean and was presented this morning at KEY ENERGY.
Coordinated by Ecodynamics Group of the University of Siena with the collaboration of 10 partners from countries overlooking the Mediterranean, renewable marine energy, the so-called blue energy, can be generated by the waves and offshore wind, by thermal gradients and the salinity of the seawater, by the algae and other marine biomass and open up roads and promising prospects for the development of the Mediterranean coasts.
Over the last three years, Maestrale has studied and tested blue energy in the Mediterranean area, producing twenty pilot projects exploring their feasibility and sustainability. The results were achieved by means of a close collaboration between international experts and local stakeholders in the various regions involved, thanks to transnational and regional participative meetings, called Blue Energy Labs.
But is the technology applied to the sea´s waves ready to be exploited for energy uses? For the project´s coordinator, Simone Bastianoni ´We are not talking about technology that is as mature as others, such as that used in the wind and photovoltaic sectors, but we are certainly heading in a direction that will shortly lead to very interesting developments. We can definitely call it one of the technologies of tomorrow.´
ITALIAN EXHIBITION GROUP PRESS CONTACTS
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