Investigating long-term energy and CO2 mitigation options at city scale: A technical analysis for the city of Bologna

Several European municipalities have initiated energy and environment plans to raise their citizens' awareness and contribute to the European Union's energy and climate objectives for 2020. However, the envisioned EU (European Union) mitigation targets by 2050 are far more challenging and will also need to be appropriately translated at urban level. How can selected options or combinations of options transform urban energy systems beyond 2020? This case study explores this question for the city of Bologna's energy system and by 2050. The methodology combines a bottom-up disaggregation of energy demands by fuel type and end-uses at sub urban level with the simulation of a large number of discrete long term alternatives. The best options considered in this paper could reduce Bologna's final energy consumption by 52% and its CO2 emissions by 83.5%. Besides this optimistic case the simulated measures shows that half of the scenarios still provide a reduction of more than 20% of energy consumption. Finally the results also outline some parameters for which the knowledge gap at city scale remains important. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.