Italian Local Policies and Programmes for Energy Efficiency. The Case Study of Rome

Law 10/1991 was issued in order to implement the National Energy Plan in the areas of energy efficiency, renew- ables, and CO2 emissions reduction. The law requires the adoption of a number of tools: energy labelling of various end use devices, new building codes, incentives to the use of renewables, etc. Furthermore, Municipal and Regional Governments are required to develop their own energy plans with an emphasis on renewables and improved energy efficiency. We present an analysis of the degree of implementation and efficacy of these tools, with a focus on local energy planning and actions. A relatively small number of energy plans have been drafted till now, very few DSM pro- grams have been performed by Municipal utilities and some Local Energy Teams have been created with support of EU. The present level of analysis and action doesn’t seem to be adequate to the importance of the energy saving potential estimated in some of these plans. To support this thesis we present some of the results of the study for the Energy Plan of Rome (the fastest growing end uses, energy saving potential and renewables potential ..), which was concluded in 1995, according to an Integrated Resource Planning (IRP) approach. Follow-up actions from the plan have been a more detailed feasibility study for programmes to promote the use of daylighting and to reduce space cooling loads, and proposals for the inclusion of new rules in the building codes.