The continuous growth of global urbanization and the increase of population concentration have brought more severe challenges to the energy consumption and environmental governance of cities. Urban transportation demand and buildings energy consumptions will undergo unprecedented changes. For Smart Cities development, reliable, efficient and low carbon energy supply is one of the key requirements and plays an important role in reducing urban energy consumption, CO2 emissions and in improving local environmental quality. To achieve more flexible and large-scale integration of renewable energy, the spread of Renewable Energy Communities (REC) becomes crucial.
In this context, the main research aim is to develop, implement, and validate methodology able to perform a holistic assessment of different scenarios for the realization of Renewable Energy Communities and, consequently, of Smart Cities. Aspects related to energy, environmental, financial and socio-economic (such as occupants’ wellbeing and health, productivity, green jobs, …) aspects have to be taken into account. The research activity deals with the following items:
- implementation of Reference Districts (fundamental to scale up the results at city layer);
- development of different retrofit scenarios for the transformation of Reference Districts in Renewable Energy Communities;
- use of simulation tools for estimating energy and local environmental impacts at district scale;
- implementation of new metrics and tools for the holistic assessment of the scenarios in order to determine the most effective one for REC realization;
- development of guidelines and best practices for Smart Cities planning.
Supervisors:
Prof. Stefano Paolo Corgnati
Prof. Guglielmina Mutani