Potential in GHG emissions abatement through an effective energy policy: the Reggio Emilia case

摘要

Enhancing buildings' energy performance is one of the key actions that should be pursued to achieve the Kyoto target. In Italy, energy requirements of the residential sector, in fact, represent about forty percent of the overall energy balance. The majority of this consumption could be avoided by simply providing strict building-design guidelines and promoting energy efficiency in existing buildings through proper energy retrofit interventions. The achievement of higher standards for households' heating and cooling has the highest potential to lower the related primary energy consumptions and green house gases (GHG) emissions. This article focuses on an original energy policy that has been issued in the municipality of Reggio Emilia, Italy, called riduCO2. Several reasons make this project innovative. First, the certification method has been processed through and verified by a quality international agency; secondly the procedure is assisting financial-incentive policies both on mandatory (European Directive 2002/91/CE) and voluntary basis (Municipality Protocol ECOABITA); finally it allows us to obtain eligible credits for avoided emissions that can be negotiated on the CO_2 exchange market. Acknowledging the amount of actions that are normally scheduled in the municipality throughout a year the benefit has been evaluated, in terms of environmental improvement, that should descend from riduCO2 protocol, projecting their trend in future years up to 2020 as well. The entire procedure has been developed in accordance with the parameters given by UNFCCC for these kinds of analyses.