District Energy Systems and Energy Management: Toward Energy Transition—2nd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, the energy issue has been playing a fundamental role in terms of environmental sustainability and business competitiveness. The 2030 European Union (EU) objectives outlines three goals for achieving energy efficiency: 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to 1990, using 32% of renewable energy sources (RES) in energy consumption and 32.5% reduction in energy consumption.

The European Commission, with the Clean Energy Package for all Europeans, considers the consumers of the EU, or rather the newly defined character of prosumers (consumers–producers), to be the main protagonists of the energy transition from fossil sources to renewable sources. In the Clean Energy Package, the concept of energy community was introduced, providing for two different models: the citizen energy community (CEC) or the community of citizens and the renewable energy community (REC) or renewable communities. Both models enable members of the community to collectively carry out production, distribution, supply, consumption, sharing, accumulation and sale of self-produced energy. In this perspective, energy communities can be seen as an integrated production–network–storage system where the needs of the community members are satisfied by the energy produced and distributed within the community itself, with the support of different types of accumulation systems.

In recent years, the scientific literature has dealt with district energy systems (with renewable sources and traditional sources), developing optimization techniques to find the best configurations (electrical and thermal networks) in terms of reducing emissions, improving sustainability and minimizing the cost of energy produced. Simultaneously, in the last 20 years, the scientific community has devoted much attention to the models of energy transition, for assessing if and to what extent, transition toward a fully RES industrial system is possible.

This Special Issue aims to highlight, within energy communities, the optimization of energy systems, and the management of the production, storage and distribution of electrical and thermal energy. Additionally, it aims to address how the energy community and the technologies considered therein could interact with the energy transition models to enhance (or not) the sustainability of society.

As the possible configuration of district energy systems becomes increasingly complex, and new technologies for energy recovery, storage and intelligent allocation become available, the role of optimal energy designs and management will be of paramount importance. The contributions to this Special Issue are expected to integrate the existing scientific literature, highlighting the consequence of these innovations and referring to the new reality of the energy communities that has emerged as a result of the European Commission’s provisions. Additionally, there is the question of introducing the concept of energy communities (and of the district heating technologies) in the development of new energy transition models.

We welcome papers dealing with real applications, and presenting forecast or updates of energy transition models, including the energy communities.

Dr. Melchiorre Casisi
Prof. Dr. Mauro Reini
Guest Editors

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• district heating and cooling networks
• district energy systems
• energy transition models
• fully res society
• optimization of energy systems
• milp models
• renewable energy technologies
• environmental sustainability
• sustainable energy
• energy management
• exergy analysis
• circular economy