Accueil / Newsletters / ACIDD - Newsletter English n°8 - January 2009
ENEA: Interview with Alberto Moro : « We are up to 80 per cent dependent on imports. »
Alberto Moro works for the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Environment. He is a member of the international network «ICT for Energy Efficiency». Here, he shares his view on the principle of energy efficiency in Italy.
 |
I work for the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Environment (ENEA).
ENEA is the main agency carrying out research, technology transfer, certification and information activities on energy efficiency issues in Italy. In the recent implementation of the European Directive 2006/32/EC of 5 April 2006 “on energy end-use efficiency and energy services and repealing Council Directive 93/76/EEC” ENEA was appointed “National Agency for Energy Efficiency” by the Italian Government.
So it is a duty of my Agency to find out solutions in order to improve EE in several industrial sectors involving also buildings, transports, education of consumers.
What is the Italian situation in terms of energy?
Italy has a very little amount of resources from traditional energy sources (coal, oil, gas). This brings to a very strong dependence (about 85%) of its energy supply from abroad. So, for Italy, it is particularly important to rise Energy Efficiency not only for environmental purposes but also in order to reduce its energetic dependence from abroad and to strengthen the security of supply. An example is the gas crises between Russia and Ukraine that these days is worrying all Europe: well, as we know in the short term these problems could be avoided by differentiating our (European) energy suppliers (e.g. buying gas not only from Russia but also from Northern Africa) and strengthening the energetic infrastructures (gas pipelines) but, in the long term, energy supply problems could be avoided only by drastically reducing our consumption, and this can be strongly affected by implementing Energy Efficiency measures.
What is happening in Italy on Energy Efficiency and how are ICT used for sustainable development?
There are several initiatives on ICT for EE in Italy, let me make a short résumé:
The Italian Government in the last two years has set up a strong initiative in order to foster the Italian industry. This initiative, named “Industria2015”, aims to identify points of strength and needs of the Italian industrial system, and to fund Research and Innovation activities specifically targeted on issues with the strongest impact. Two of the five R & I funding calls of Industria2015 where released in the specific issues: “Energy efficiency” and “Sustainable mobility”. In these calls ICT for EE themes are not identified as an independent area but are however present embedded in other sectors.
The Confederation of Italian Industry (Confindustria) has set up a task force specifically focused on energy efficiency issues with the aim of identifying the technologies and the most promising policy measures for energy savings in several industrial sectors.
This task force, on these issues, has published the study: “Proposals for a National Energy Efficiency Plan”. In this study, with reference to the last definition of “ICT” provided in the COMM(2008) 241, ICT technologies are not clearly identified and studied as a technology per se but are integrated in various industrial applications.
The largest electric power utility in Italy (ENEL), is carrying out several activities in the field of smart grids, smart lightings and awareness raising on energy use. All these activities are part of the widest ENEL framework project: “Environment and Innovation”.
Private Companies are spontaneously integrating energy efficiency issues and related ICT technologies in their corporate strategies. Several of them (e.g. ENI, Vodafone, …) are carrying out initiatives in order to reduce the energy consumption of their devices and their working procedures, with measures such as substitution of old network servers with low consumption ones, use of new metering systems, improvement of efficiency of powering devices and fostering the adoption of videoconferences. They are also supporting several independent campaigns of awareness raising on consumers behaviour regarding energy efficiency.
Italian local governments play an important role both in the process of spreading energy efficiency culture among the citizens and in implementing these aims with practical solutions. Several town governments have already undertaken autonomous energy efficiency measures by using ICT technologies, particularly in the smart lighting sector, substituting traditional public lighting with led based lights, or using innovative systems as flux regulators in order to reduce the public lighting energy consumption.
And, last but not least, ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Environment, is carrying out research, technology transfer, certification and information activities on energy efficiency issues in Italy. ENEA has specific knowledge and high level laboratories on both energy and ICT fields, carrying out activities such as research, qualification and information activities in the field of lighting, smart grids, buildings and transports.
Could you give some concrete examples for the building, transport and behaviour sectors?
For example, in the field of buildings, there are software that can help us in designing new buildings with very high Energy Efficiency performances, exploiting at best natural resources of the environment such as sunlight and using local construction material that allows a better insulation of the envelops. These software can also help engineers and architects to easily design and choose the more suitable energy co-generation systems to be integrated in the building such as photovoltaic panels, solar energy systems to heat water, or heat pumps for climatization.
In the field of transports I can mention some examples: there are some hardware ICT for EE solutions such as electric and electronic devices that allows a better energy use or re-use on the car, particularly in hybrid cars (similarly to the mechanical KERS systems that are going to be used in the next Formula 1 championship). Second: we have (as ENEA) some software that can model and foresee the urban traffic flows, that can help policy makers to better plan the local transport policies. These models can be integrated with traffic sensors embedded in the roads and GIS systems so to allow the developing of a intelligent traffic managing system, that can identify – in real time – the better pattern and help car users to avoid traffic jam advising them in choosing alternative roads.
For what concern the behavioural issues, In my opinion they are fundamental: the first energy saving has to be done in our mind. It’s useless that we do research efforts in order to rise the efficiency of a heating system, if we want, in winter, to stay at home wearing only with a t-shirt!
Why are you interested in the ICTforEE initiative and what are you looking for?
ENEA is a partner of the ICTforEE initiative: we are interested, in particular, in gathering data and identifying methodologies that can help us evaluate the more performing ICT for EE applications. In fact, at this moment there are several ICT for EE applications in various sectors, not only in buildings and transports but also in other industrial sectors, but it is not easy to say which of all the existing ICT for EE applications is more effective on energy saving purposes because the EE concept involves the whole life cycle of a product/service and several data are missing. This project aims exactly at identifying good practice and gathering the missing data.
… a lot of very committing, interesting and useful work is waiting for the ICTforEE partners!
www.enea.it