Abstract
Environmental change is currently considered a high-priority matter, both in the scientific community at large and at the institutional level of national and international governing bodies. Actually, an all-out effort seeks to investigate and advance viable solutions to deal with the global emergencies regarding to anthropic climate change; increasing demands for renewable sources of energy, technological innovation and energy-saving systems, ecological and environmental sustainability of natural resources and land. At the core of this worldwide endeavour an increasingly significant role seems destined to the agricultural sector and to agro-energy production systems for the potential benefits in terms of production costs. In fact, the interest in unconventional and low-impact energy sources mandates thorough investigation not only into the advantages, in terms of availability and affordability, but also into the impact on the environment and the quality of the landscape, as well as the aspects regarding the overall measures that need be adopted so as to enable the supply on the market. Given this scenario, the wide-ranging agro-energy question would be incomplete without extensive economic sustainability analyses, serving as operational decision-support tools to measure cost-effectiveness regarding investments in agro-energy production and its use.
Highlights
Environmental issues are one the most widely debated topics within the scientific community and governing bodies at the international and national levels
The weight that the agricultural sector is bound to carry regarding the challenges we face in matters of climate and energy production is reflected in the programming strategies that have been promoted in the past decade at the international and European Union (EU) levels, as well as at the national and regional levels, wherein the explicit reference is to the multifunctional role of the activities linked to the rural world
The direction emerging from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and its proposals for reform, together with the guidelines set out in the recent Rural Development Policy 2014-20, envision the sector within a framework capable of promoting development that is compatible with the necessity to preserve and safeguard the landscape and natural resources
Summary
Environmental issues are one the most widely debated topics within the scientific community and governing bodies at the international and national levels. 20 November 2013 on a General Union Environment Action Programme to 2020 “Living well, within the limits of our planet”; Energy Roadmap 2050, COM(2011)/885/final.) [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9] Given this scenario, an increasingly significant role has been assigned to the agricultural sector and to the production of agro-energy. In view of the steady increase in production costs, new, unconventional and low-impact energy sources emerge as effective operational tools. Their availability and affordability enable us to pursue the objectives of protecting and enhancing the value of natural resources in rural areas, within an eco-systemic vision of built-in multi-functionality and sustainability of productive activities
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