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Models and Tools for Buildings’ Energy-Use Mapping and Planning at Urban Scale

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Energy Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 December 2021) | Viewed by 7789

Special Issue Editor

Responsible Risk Resilience Centre R3C, Department of Energy, Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy
Interests: buildings’ energy-use models; urban scale energy balance models; energy efficiency technologies; renewable energy sources; building energy performance certification; indoor and outdoor thermal comfort; urban energy atlas; resilient cities; energy communities; energy policies and strategies; sustainable development of the territory

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The use of energy is essential for our quality of life on earth, but it also has a great impact on the environment, and therefore, it is necessary to reduce energy consumptions and to exploit the renewable resources that the territories offer. There is no single solution that is suitable for all territories; thus, it is important to be able to define what the characteristics of each territory are in terms of energy demand and supply. For this purpose, energy models and atlas tools have been developed on an urban and territorial scale that allow finding a suitable sustainable solution for each territory.

A sustainable management of energy could be a great opportunity to be exploited in urban areas where complex environments, high population densities, many anthropogenic activities, and high environmental impact, together with high energy demand, low availability of spaces and renewable energy sources, are present. In this context, buildings are always a key-contributor in optimizing the use of energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions and, in Europe, one of the main drivers to improve the sustainability and quality of urban environment. The use of urban-scale energy models and tools allows optimizing the spatial distribution of energy consumption, production, and productivity, taking into account all the constraints and other characteristics of built environment. The new European directives, 2018/2001 on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources and 2019/944 on common rules for the internal market for electricity, have introduced the energy communities as a territorial entity to manage the sustainable use of energy from an environmental, economic, and social point of view.

The development of urban-scale energy models and tools is currently the goal of many research groups due to the increased interest in evaluating the impacts of energy-use, energy-efficiency measures and low-emission technologies in cities. The objectives of these studies are to: (i) provide a replicable assessment and models to describe the energy demand, distribution, and production at urban scale; (ii) identify tools capable of managing big databases at territorial scale with low detail and different scales but high accuracy and low simulation times; (iii) evaluate the size of energy communities to guarantee energy independence at low environmental and economic impacts; (iv) maximize the harvesting of renewable energy at district scale, the energy-saving measures, and the reductions of greenhouse gas emissions for energy self-sufficient districts; (v) investigate best building retrofitting solutions for an optimal re-tuning of the energy-use model and optimize its behavior in future scenarios; and (vi) give information to policy makers, local authorities, and citizens on the measures to reduce energy consumptions and greenhouse gas emissions (from territorial, to a district/municipal or a building scale). The purposes of research are

i) Energy-use variable identification: starting from the available information about buildings and population at urban/district level, define energy-use-driven variables to evaluate the energy performance of buildings;

ii) Energy-use model application: evaluation of the existing energy-use models at urban scale for optimizations of the models for each application with different levels of accuracy;

iii) Tools to analyze and represent energy resources, future scenarios, energy efficiency solutions, and best cost-effective energy policies;

iv) Energy communities and self-sufficient districts: definition of different scenarios for energy self-sufficient communities and districts using the energy models in different cities;

v) Energy risk and resilient assessment to evaluate energy policies for “ad hoc” sustainable solutions for each city and territory;

vi) Economical assessment: a cost–benefit analysis with time-varying energy demand and supply with different laws, regulations, and incentives.

This Special Issue aims to collect research on models and tools for the assessment and mapping of energy consumption of buildings in cities and territories. The main models used are top–down, bottom–up or hybrid models; the latter exploit energy balances on systems of different scales and are also called engineering.

Through the use of these models and tools, it will be possible to identify the real characteristics of the buildings stock and users, the constraints on the built environment, the availability of renewable energy sources, and the energy-saving potentials. Therefore, the real energy and environmental targets of each city and territory will be found, and this result will be used to update the local building codes and incentives, promoting the most appropriate solutions for each territory. In addition, with the right energy models and tools, citizens will also be able to evaluate how to reduce their consumptions through retrofit measures, technologies that exploit renewable resources, and economic incentives in force.

To evaluate energy and environmental targets, some studies are defining methodologies to calculate energy risk and resilience for cities and communities, and actions to reduce energy risks and to improve energy resilience. The basis of these assessments is the definition of energy community (EU Directive 2018/2001 on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources and EU Directive 2019/944 on common rules for the internal market for electricity), a resilient network or a smart grid connecting producers, consumers, and prosumers for the sustainable development of a territory.

We particularly welcome to this Special Issue, papers presenting energy indicators, assessments, models, and tools applied to cities and territories useful to analyze the sustainability of their energy, environmental, economic, and social system or scenarios for a more sustainable future.

References:

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Carozza, M., Mutani, G., Coccolo, S., Kaempf, J. H. (2017). Introducing a hybrid energy-use model at the urban scale: the case study of Turin (IT). Proceedings of the 3rd IBPSA-Italy Conference. Retrieved from http://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/230188.

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Guelpa, E., Mutani, G., Todeschi, V., Verda, V. (2018). Reduction of CO2 emissions in urban areas through optimal expansion of existing district heating networks. Journal of Cleaner Production, 204. https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.08.272.

Mutani, G., Todeschi V., Kämpf, J., Coors, V., Fitzsky, M. (2018). Building energy consumption modeling at urban scale: three case studies in Europe for residential buildings. https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/doi:10.1109/INTLEC.2018.8612382.

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Mutani, G., & Todeschi, V. (2017). Space heating models at urban scale for buildings in the city of Turin (Italy). Energy Procedia, Vol. 122, pp. 841–846. https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/doi:10.1016/j.egypro.2017.07.445.

Mutani, G. & Todeschi, V. (2018). Energy resilience, vulnerability and risk in urban spaces. Journal of Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems, 6(4), 694–709. https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.13044/J.SDEWES.D6.0211.

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Mutani, G., Todeschi, V., Grisolia, G., Lucia, U. (2019). Introduction to Constructal Law Analysis for a Simplified Hourly Energy Balance Model of Residential Buildings at District Scale. TI-Italian Journal of Engineering Science, 63(1), 13–20. https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.18280/ti-ijes.630102.

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Dr. Guglielmina Mutani
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • energy-use models
  • energy tools and atlas
  • renewable energy sources
  • energy and climate targets
  • resilient cities
  • energy communities
  • sustainable development
  • energy policies and strategies
  • urban and territorial scale

Published Papers (2 papers)

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22 pages, 9497 KiB  
Article
Evaluation of Urban-Scale Building Energy-Use Models and Tools—Application for the City of Fribourg, Switzerland
by Valeria Todeschi, Roberto Boghetti, Jérôme H. Kämpf and Guglielmina Mutani
Sustainability 2021, 13(4), 1595; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su13041595 - 03 Feb 2021
Cited by 20 | Viewed by 4414
Abstract
Building energy-use models and tools can simulate and represent the distribution of energy consumption of buildings located in an urban area. The aim of these models is to simulate the energy performance of buildings at multiple temporal and spatial scales, taking into account [...] Read more.
Building energy-use models and tools can simulate and represent the distribution of energy consumption of buildings located in an urban area. The aim of these models is to simulate the energy performance of buildings at multiple temporal and spatial scales, taking into account both the building shape and the surrounding urban context. This paper investigates existing models by simulating the hourly space heating consumption of residential buildings in an urban environment. Existing bottom-up urban-energy models were applied to the city of Fribourg in order to evaluate the accuracy and flexibility of energy simulations. Two common energy-use models—a machine learning model and a GIS-based engineering model—were compared and evaluated against anonymized monitoring data. The study shows that the simulations were quite precise with an annual mean absolute percentage error of 12.8 and 19.3% for the machine learning and the GIS-based engineering model, respectively, on residential buildings built in different periods of construction. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis using the Morris method was carried out on the GIS-based engineering model in order to assess the impact of input variables on space heating consumption and to identify possible optimization opportunities of the existing model. Full article
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Case Report
A Comprehensive Evaluation of Electricity Planning Models in Egypt: Optimization versus Agent-Based Approaches
by Mostafa Shaaban, Jürgen Scheffran, Mohamed Salah Elsobki and Hossein Azadi
Sustainability 2022, 14(3), 1563; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su14031563 - 28 Jan 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2669
Abstract
A rational assessment of electricity generation technologies constitutes a cornerstone to attain a sustainable and secure electricity plan. The Egyptian government is struggling with the accelerated growth of the national electricity demand through setting up and examining different future electricity scenarios and through [...] Read more.
A rational assessment of electricity generation technologies constitutes a cornerstone to attain a sustainable and secure electricity plan. The Egyptian government is struggling with the accelerated growth of the national electricity demand through setting up and examining different future electricity scenarios and through the implementation of energy models to secure the provision of affordable and clean energy as part of the United Nations 2030 agenda of achieving the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs). However, conventional techno-economic models still represent for many countries an attractive tool for energy planning. We investigate in this article the added values of applying a dynamic multi-criteria spatial-agent model that covers several sustainability dimensions versus an optimization techno-economic model for future energy planning in Egypt. Moreover, we report on the historical development of electricity supply since 2009 in Egypt. The study reveals predominant advantages of applying the agent-based modeling approach, which simulates the evolution of an energy transition landscape through the interactive and adaptive dynamic decision behavior of different societal groups (agents) in response to changes in the whole system. The study advocates the implementation of a dynamic agent-based bottom-up approach for the planning of a future sustainable electricity mix in Egypt. Full article
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