Valentina Antoniucci

How Regulation Affects Energy Saving: Smart Grid Innovation in Tall Buildings

The economic problems involved in new high-rise buildings are mainly approached from the developer’s perspective, especially in private-public partnerships, popular in Italian urban planning. Interest in energy savings and sustainability for buildings has recently increased considerably. Italian regulations have generally approached these problems from the viewpoint of materials and structures; zoning regulations do not cover energy from the viewpoint of investment projects and their externalities, either in urban development or from the economic viewpoint.

Housing price gradient and immigrant population: Data from the Italian real estate market

The database presented here was collected by Antoniucci and Marella to analyze the correlation between the housing price gradient and the immigrant population in Italy during 2016. It may also be useful in other statistical analyses, be they on the real estate market or in another branches of social science. The data sample relates to 112 Italian provincial capitals. It provides accurate information on urban structure, and specifically on urban density. The two most significant variables are original indicators constructed from official data sources: the housing price gradient, or the ratio between average prices in the center and suburbs by city; and building density, which is the average number of housing units per residential building. The housing price gradient is calculated for the two residential sub-markets, new-build and existing units, providing an original and detailed sample of the Italian residential market. Rather than average prices, the housing price gradient helps to identify potential divergences in residential market trends. As well as house prices, two other data clusters are considered: socio-economic variables, which provide a framework of each city, in terms of demographic and economic information; and various data on urban structure, which are rarely included in the same database.

Energy Communities in a Distributed-Energy Scenario: Four Different Kinds of Community Arrangements

Distributed-energy generation enables a closer link to be established between energy production and energy consumption, but it does not, in itself, necessarily entail any (new) particular role or organization for groups of people. Nevertheless, because of the distributed-energy spread, the phenomenon of so-called energy communities is growing: all over the world, different kinds of groups organized to produce and consume energy are flourishing. In this regard, the term “energy community” is used in a generic sense to refer to heterogeneous phenomena. This work contributes to the study of energy communities by identifying key features that enhance understanding of what energy communities are. Since the literature seems to offer only partial points of view, this chapter intends to contribute to building a new taxonomy of energy communities with which to understand the nature and possible effects of the phenomenon. A first distinction can be drawn between place-based communities and non-place-based ones: in the first case, there is coherence between the community and a specific territory; this does not occur in the second case. Another difference is apparent between communities which form (and operate) only for energy purposes and those which instead add other purposes; in this regard, we can further distinguish between “energy-only communities” and “multi-issue communities”. These two pairs of possibilities give rise to a four-cell matrix: that is, to four main cases of energy communities.

How Regulation Affects Innovation: The Smart Grid Case At Urban Scale

Purpose: The paper discusses energy saving policies implemented in Italy in the last ten years and shows their ineffectiveness in promoting innovation in new energy systems, such as Smart Grids.The economic fundamentals involved in energy consumption are investigated with specific reference to high rise – high density settlements and their prevalent building typology, i.e. tall buildings. The paper discusses how the energy demand and consumption of a single building can affect the energy trade-off of entire cities.Approach – We examine current local and national policies- for energy consumption reduction, then we discuss how Italian urban planning should adopt ad hoc regulation in order to pursue innovative systems of energy saving. We also - debate on the present absence of procedures to evaluate these policies’ effects on market demand in both new building construction and deep energy retrofit. Finally we argue the inadequacy of Italian national and local legislation in promoting Smart Grids as innovative systems of electric energy production, distribution and consumption.Findings – We represent the stat of art in the Italian legislation for energy saving and we offer a theoretical framework to verify the effectiveness of these measures. Furthermore we propose a new way to promote innovative systems of energy production for high density settlements. In this respect, due to technological and facility management characteristics tall buildings are an opportunity to experiment smart grids at neighborhood level. Beyond the construction engineering advances, we present how regulation should help to improve innovation.Research limitations/implications – The paper is mainly exploratory and identifies some issues for further research. Data on housing market demand related to public incentives must be collected to measure the effectiveness of local norms. Furthermore, selected case studies must be investigated to verify the energy demand at diverse urban density: this survey is preliminary to the definition of protocols for both technological and regulatory interventions.Originality/values – The paper is the first attempt in Italy to present the role of town planning norms in the promotion of Smart Grids and, in general, to match innovative distributed energy systems to legislation in planning. Furthermore the present contribution highlights the potential of specific building typologies, e.g. tall buildings, in the promotion of Smart Grids.