Suchergebnisse

This work addresses the subjects of reducing fossil energy consumption and the interventions to improve energy efficiency in the European agricultural-food sys-tem. Following an overview on both such subjects, the results of European projects TESLA and SCOoPE are also analysed with attention to best practices and technologies available to improve energy efficiency in order to reduce the fossil energy use in agri-food systems of Mediterranean countries. A list of Key Performance Indicators for the fruit and vegetable sector, useful for comparative analyses aimed at selecting best methods of energy management and technologies for improving energy efficiency, is reported. Finally, a brief focus on European policies concerning the solutions adopted by the new European Commission to make the agri-food system more sustainable from an energy and environmental point of view is also discussed.

Buildings in Europe consume 40% of total energy consumption and not less than 65% of the total electricity consumption. This work reports the first results of a research developed at the ENEA Casaccia Center, under the Electricity System Research Program (RDS), funded by the Ministry of Economic Development. The experiments were carried out on a demonstration building on which the necessary structures for research activities were built. Among the cultivated vegetable essences, the best results have been obtained with the Parthenocissus varieties, which have reached a leaf coverage of over 3.5 m2 and with the Vitis vinifera varieties with a leaf surface of over 3 m2. From an energy point of view, the data collected, although still preliminary and not definitive, the collected data showed a significant reduction in the surface temperature of the greened facade by over 14°C compared to the non-vegetated areas of the demonstration building. Taking into account the fact that the plant systems are an increasingly important element to improve energy efficiency and environmental sustainability of buildings, further research and experiments are necessary for a more detailed assessment of the biological and agronomic parameters that characterize plant systems when grown on the building to define their influence on the surface temperature of the vegetated facades of buildings and on the energy flows entering the building.

The objective of this study is to provide a good "benchmark" case in juice fruit production plants for comparing their performance in terms of energy consumption and final product "yield". In particular, the industrial step-by-step processes performed for the production of natural fresh orange juice, fruit juices and purees will be dissected, also referring to the operations. By exploiting the Value Stream Mapping (VSM) methodology, we report general energy consumptions due to the main production processes and highlight the most energy-intensive ones, in order to provide a base for the selection of useful and reasonable key performance indicators. Furthermore, we include some sectorial KPIs that have been extracted from the literature.

The agriculture and agro-industry system, in the overall definition of agricultural production, processing industry, distribution and services, is characterized by a strong demand for innovation to satisfy the continuous and changing needs of consumers. This situation, on the one hand, is determined by the needs of companies to respond effectively to market globalization, on the other hand, however, it has strongly increased energy consumption and the environmental impacts of the sector. This work examines the energy consumption of the agri-food supply chain and illustrates the most significant technologies and production processes for sustainable energy and environmental modernization.

The food industry is one of the largest energy consumers in the world, with 95 EJ/year. In this context, in Europe the amount of energy needed to cultivate, process, package and bring food to the homes of citizens reached 285 Mtoe in 2015, of which 14 Mtoe due to the Italian agricultural and food system. With the aim of favoring a drastic reduction in energy consumption, the European Commission, and the main international agencies, ie: FAO, OECD, UN over the last decade have aligned on the need to develop policies to support energy efficiency, renewable energies and sustainable technologies in order to minimize the use of fossil fuels and to reduce the final energy consumption, especially in the main energy-intensive sectors as industry and construction, but also with regards to agriculture and food industry sector. This work is focused on the agricultural and food system in Italy, of which the energy consumption and efficiency measures, the renewable energy use, and the new consumer trends for a sustainable agrofood system, are briefly analyzed.