Environmental protocol for Energy Communities

Abstract

The Paris Agreement on climate change signed during the recent XXI United Nations Convention generates further incentives towards sustainable development. In particular, the Clean Energy strategy that many European countries have agreed to targets 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, 32% improvement in the share of renewable energy, and an increase in energy efficiency by 32.5% by 2030. In this study the energy requirements for four regions in Piedmont were examined. Such communities have diverse geomorphologic locations, population density and energy needs. The energy analysis was combined with the development and assessment of sustainability criteria for encouraging a real integration of the energy efficiency to environmental quality parameters. Such assessment includes a variety of criteria and reward points in order to incentivize the achievement of sustainable energy solutions in each region. The suggested environmental protocol proposed in this study is based on calculable criteria and indicators and on threshold values that make it possible to quickly evaluate the potential of a territory in order to create a sustainable energy community. This methodology is flexible and transferable elsewhere since the criteria and the threshold values can be modified to reflect the specific territorial context of interest.