Optimizing Local Energy Systems Through Bottom-Up Modelling: A TIMES-Based Analysis for the Municipality of Tito, Southern Italy

The energy transition is an essential process for mitigating the effects of climate change, in a global context where recent conflicts are increasingly jeopardising the security of energy supply. Municipalities play an increasing role in achieving the decarbonization targets set at a national level using more efficient technologies, renewable energy production, cleaner energy solutions and the active involvement of citizens. Effective and prescriptive tools are needed to enable local administrators to identify the most appropriate actions and policies for achieving quantitative targets. Among the tools available, energy models make it possible to represent the status quo, based on the energy balance of a reference year, and the evolution of the energy system under different boundary conditions or constraints, to define the least-cost pathways for sustainable development based on present and future technology availability. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the usefulness of a bottom-up modelling approach in the framework of the ETSAP TIMES models’ generator to represent and optimize the local scale energy system of the city of Tito in Southern Italy and to pave the way for further analysis aimed at promoting the implementation of a renewable energy community and energy efficiency measures, with the view to achieve a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the residential and tertiary sectors. The optimization of a Business-as-Usual reference scenario over a thirty-year time horizon (2020-2050) shows an initial situation based on the prevalent use of natural gas. The sensitivity analysis carried out by gradually increasing the cost of natural gas and providing subsidies for the purchase of heat pumps shows significant benefits in terms of reduction of fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.