A Clean Energy Atlas for Energy Communities in Piedmont Region (Italy)

The energy community is defined as a “cooperative/partnership/non-profit organization of final customers (municipalities, public and private entities, citizens) aimed at achieving energy independence in order to guarantee energy security, low environment impact and affordable energy costs”. This work defines a place-based methodology for the dimensioning of energy communities, according to the requirements of the first Italian law on energy communities issued by the Piedmont Region. The aim is to evaluate the correct size and optimal aggregation of municipalities for future energy communities, considering the energy consumptions and the renewable energy sources available in a territory. In particular, with a place-based methodology, the electricity potentially produced by forest and agricultural biomass, waste, wind, solar and hydraulic sources was evaluated, in accordance with regulations and constrains. Thus, a renewable energy sources atlas was implemented to provide a tool for the estimation of energy, environmental and socio-economic performance indexes of the municipalities of the Piedmont Region. In conclusion, considering the energy production, productivity and consumption of each municipality and the requirements of energy communities, a tool to optimally aggregate municipalities for creating energetic communities is described.