Synergy between Cities and surrounding territory to achieve the international agreements on energy and CO2 reduction. The Municipality of Avezzano in the Abruzzo Region (Italy) case.

Abstract

Cities have a fundamental role in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The European Community has already addressed a specific planning under the actions referred as SEAPs (Sustainable Environmental Action Plans) and SECAPs (Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans). In fact, Municipalities are the smallest entities with a political responsibility in terms of Energy and Environmental Planning, and they must participate, as commitment, to the European Directives on Energy and fight to Climate change. They, finally, are often the most unsustainable environments due to the aggregation of many activities, energy and CO2 related.In this paper, for a typical small/medium-size Italian city (Avezzano), an evolution of the SEAP and the SECAP has been supposed and elaborated within the Covenant of Mayors. The synergy between the energy consumption of a city and the capability of a territory to mitigate CO2 and to finalize renewable energy to electricity production appears to be the right answer to the even more stringent commitments imposed by the gas crisis at worldwide level which is pushing to a new switch-on of coal fired power plants.Starting from the data and the list of actions elaborated to fulfil the SECAP, two scenarios have been evaluated to create a zero CO2 emission city. A model with multiple inputs has been elaborated with the main aim of reducing GHG emissions or compensating them, trying to sustain the effort to keep limited to 1,5 °C the maximum Planet’s temperature increase. Increasing the renewable energy production for all the energy final needs, exploitation of unused area finalized to carbon sequestration, energy efficiency and specific actions on the transportation sectors give all together a formidable contribution to reach this goal and to give to energy and environmental planning the right role it deserves.