Integrating Solar Energy in Rome's Built Environment
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ESSAY Solar Energy www.advsustainsys.com Integrating Solar Energy in Rome’s Built Environment: A Perspective for Distributed Generation on Global Scale Rosaria Ciriminna, Mario Pecoraino, Francesco Meneguzzo,* and Mario Pagliaro* Dedicated to Professor Livio de Santoli for all he has done to promote solar energy and energy efficiency in Italy’s historic built environment countries,[2] and a similar percentage in Large-scale integration of solar energy technologies in Rome’s built environment China, where building energy consumption epitomizes the needed general adoption of distributed generation via has increased at 7% annual rate since 2001.[3] functionalization of buildings of all size and end use across the world, to become Countries in Europe generally have limited or even no fossil fuel resources, active energy generators and no longer energy users only. This essay identifies with oil production from the oil and gas selected technology solutions and critical policy and educational initiatives to reserves in the North Sea having decreased effectively achieve within the next decade (2018–2027) the widespread uptake of at fast pace since 1999 (for instance, the decentralized solar energy systems in the built environment on a global scale. United Kingdom’s offshore oil production went from 398 million barrels in 1999 to 220 million barrels in 2007).[4] 1. Introduction In this context, aiming at saving oil and natural gas consid- ered strategic for industry and transport sectors, it is perhaps not A new model combining the competing dynamics of oil price, surprising that starting in the early 2000s the EU drafted increas- economic growth, and extraction costs,[1] suggests that invest- ingly tight legislation to promote energy efficiency in buildings ments in new renewable energy power need to be urgently along with the use of renewable energy. Since 2002 first, and increased to cope with the global consequences of the resulting even more strictly since 2010, an Energy Performance of Build- energy and economic scenario. ings Directive (EPBD) defines minimum criteria for the energy With the global population growing along the current trajec- performance of new and refurbished buildings. The 2010 EPBD, tory, in the 2016–2025 decade about 800 million people will add for instance, requires all new buildings to be nearly zero energy to the world’s population. Correspondingly, in order to feed the by the end of 2020; and all new public buildings by 2018.[5] “natural” growth of the gross domestic product (GDP) identi- The new legislation resulted in a decrease in the consump- fied by the above model, by 2025 the total energy consumption tion of energy by the residential sector in the EU from about should increase by about 1700 million tons of oil equivalent 318 MTOE in 2000 to 287 in 2014;[6] though half of the effi- (MTOE) per year. Even to keep the oil fraction in the energy ciency gains achieved through technological innovation in the mix at the 2015 level (around 33%), this means that more than household sector have been offset by an increasing number of 11 additional million barrels per day will have to be added to electrical appliances and larger homes.[2] current production levels.[1] Furthermore, action must be taken to improve the situation Consuming energy for space and water heating and of the existing building stock, since about 75% of buildings are electricity for cooling, lighting, and powering domestic appli- truly energy inefficient and, depending on the country, only ances, buildings are responsible for a significant share of global 0.4–1.2% of the stock is renovated each year.[7] energy consumption: more than 40% in European Union (EU) Alone, the conflict between increasing specific dwelling consumption and increasing energy efficiency of buildings Dr. R. Ciriminna, Dr. M. Pagliaro observed in the EU countries shows that energy efficiency alone Istituto per lo Studio dei Materiali Nanostrutturati is not enough. The generation and use of renewable energy is CNR of similar paramount importance. via U. La Malfa 153, 90146 Palermo, Italy E-mail: [email protected] The solar city concept, namely, the use of surfaces in the M. Pecoraino entire urban built environment to generate electricity via solar [8] via C. Giacquinto 14, 90135 Palermo, Italy photovoltaic (PV) modules, is being actively explored in the Dr. F. Meneguzzo context of the energy transition to renewable energy. Solar city Istituto di Biometeorologia possibilities, for example, were lately considered for cities as CNR large and as important as Amsterdam, London, Munich, New via Madonna del Piano 10, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy York, Seoul, and Tokyo.[9] E-mail: [email protected] When dealing with historic cities, large-scale adoption of The ORCID identification number(s) for the author(s) of this article can be found under https://doi.org/10.1002/adsu.201800022. solar energy requires systematic architectural integration of the solar energy technology to combine historic preservation with DOI: 10.1002/adsu.201800022 efficient generation of renewable energy. Adv. Sustainable Syst. 2018, 2, 1800022 1800022 (1 of 9) © 2018 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim www.advancedsciencenews.com www.advsustainsys.com Preserving the architectural integrity and historic value of old buildings, indeed, is as important as the generation of clean Francesco Meneguzzo is a energy. Referring to Rome as the city with the world’s largest physicist at the Institute of historic heritage, this paper identifies selected technology Biometeorology of Italy’s solutions and critical policy and educational initiatives to effec- Research Council in Florence. tively achieve within the next decade (2018–2027) the needed He coordinates a research widespread uptake of decentralized solar energy systems in the group active in numerous built environment on a truly global scale. fields from energy to the bioeconomy. His recent achievements include the 2. The Case of Italy development of an entirely new brewing process based Hosting the largest historic heritage of the world,[10] and with on hydrodynamic cavitation good to excellent solar irradiance levels,[11] Italy has pioneered technology which has been called by the MIT Technology the development of building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV), a Review the “technology which is about to revolutionize multifunctional technology that unifies the photovoltaic module beer-making.” Between 1996 and 2002, as a weather fore- with the overall building outer surface providing the building caster, he has established Tuscany’s Regional Met Service, with several other functions.[12] For example, an Italian-German later to become the well-known LAMMA weather forecast research and demonstration project (PVAccept) funded by the center. He has helped drafting the FiT law that made Italy European Commission between 2001 and 2004 developed dif- in less than three years one of the world’s leading coun- ferent marketable PV solar modules of innovative design for their tries in terms of installed PV power. integration into old buildings, historical sites, the urban space, and landscapes.[13] Awarded the 2008 European Solar Prize for the category Mario Pagliaro is a chemistry “solar architecture,”[14] Rome hosts on the rooftop of the “Paul and energy scholar whose VI” Audience Hall in the Vatican City an elegant PV array research team in Sicily at comprised of 2394 ad hoc modules in crystalline silicon of Italy’s Research Council 220 kilowatt peak (kWp) nominal power (Figure 1). has contributed to advance Shortly afterward, de Santoli, who designed the system, has various areas of catalysis, explored the integration of new energy technologies for sustain- solar chemistry, sol-gel ability in Rome, from the analysis of energy savings achievable materials, solar energy and through PV systems on school roofs,[15] through energy savings the bioeconomy. Co-chair achievable via the retrofitting of public housing dwellings from of the 10th edition of the the 1940s in an historic neighborhood.[16] FIGIPAS Meeting in Inorganic Yet, still today neither the city of Rome nor Italy’s cen- Chemistry, the SuNEC-Sun tral or regional governments have published guidelines with New Energy Conference and the FineCat Symposium the criteria for incorporating solar PV and solar thermal (ST) on catalysis for fine chemicals, he has a keen interest in education and regularly gives courses on the topics of his broad researches. technologies in the built environment. As a result, the use of solar modules and thermal collectors in the historic center of cities like Rome, Florence, Venice, Catania, and Naples is vani- shingly low. For comparison, in order “to find a proper balance between technical and aesthetic requirements,” several Swiss Cantons adopted guidelines for the integration of solar tech- nologies in the building environment.[18] On the other hand, Italy’s new energy strategy for the period 2020–2030 (Strategia Energetica Nazionale – SEN) has iden- tified PV as one of the best options for increasing the share of renewable energy in the country,[19] and to eliminate coal power production by 2025 by increasing the share of renewable energy sources to 27% in 2030. In detail, power production from PV is expected to increase from 24.8 TWh in 2017 (7.8% of electricity demand in Italy, the highest stake in a highly Figure 1. The photovoltaic array on the rooftop of “Paul VI” Audience Hall in the Vatican City. Image reproduced under the terms of the Creative industrialized country) to 72 TWh by 2030: an energy produc- Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.[17] Copyright 2008, Carsten tion target which requires new solar installations to exceed Möller. 3 GW year−1. Adv. Sustainable Syst. 2018, 2, 1800022 1800022 (2 of 9) © 2018 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim www.advancedsciencenews.com www.advsustainsys.com In sharp contrast, since the end of the Feed-in-Tariff (FiT) incentives in mid-2012 through 2017 Italy has installed only 2.7 GW.