Identifying districts’ potential to become Positive Energy Districts (PED) is challenging but strategic since they are considered critical enablers for cities’ carbon neutrality. PEDs are city areas with a positive annual energy balance, achieved primarily through energy efficiency and renewable energy generation while ensuring sufficient energy flexibility. This investigation introduces a methodological framework designed to prioritise and comprehend the potential PED status of diverse districts within a city, drawing upon predetermined criteria and expert insights. The study employs a combination of Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) and Analytic Network Process (ANP) methodologies to scrutinise the city's various districts and the influencing criteria. The method's applicability is tested through to the specific case of Valencia City. The study reveals that the importance of specific criteria in attaining PED varies according to the distinctive attributes of each district. Furthermore, variations emerge based on the perspective and expertise of the contributing experts. The results of this application allowed the selection of the 19 most influential criteria, organised into technical, social, urban, environmental and economic clusters. The two economic criteria (Investement and Grant or projects), one social criterion (Interest or acceptance) and one technical (Potential for retrofitting the buildings), are the most influential overall. The evaluation of the 19 administrative districts of Valencia for each criterion allowed the identification of the districts on the city's outskirts as having the greatest potential to be energy-positive. In conclusion, the proposed methodology aids decision-making in a city's urban energy planning on a district-by-district basis.

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This study develops a methodology to characterise and forecast large consumers’ electricity demand, particularly municipalities, with hundreds of different metered supply points based on the previous characterisation of facilities’ consumption. Demand forecasting allows consumers to improve their participation in electricity markets and manage their electricity consumption. The method considers a classification by different types of metered supply points combined with artificial neural networks to obtain hourly forecasts using well-known parameters such as day types, hourly temperature, the last hour of electricity consumption, and sunrise and sunset time. We apply the methodology to the municipality of Valencia using over five hundred hourly load profiles for a year during 2017 and 2018. Our results present aggregated forecasts with a maximum Mean Absolute Percentage Error of 3.8% per day, outperforming the same forecast without classifying Metered Supply Points. We conclude that a correct electricity demand forecast for a consumer with different types of consumption does not need submetering, but characterising Metered Supply Points is an option with lower costs that allows for better predictions.

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This research raises the possibility for households in energy poverty to participate in shared photovoltaic systems in renewable energy communities (REC) to reduce their energy costs, with investment costs covered by public institutions. It begins by evaluating the current solution for vulnerable households, which relies on public subsidies to lower energy costs without addressing root causes or improving environmental impacts. The study compares traditional subsidies with REC participation for vulnerable households. By simulating a REC composed of such households, the results indicate that REC participation is more cost-effective for public institutions than energy subsidies. At the economically optimal size of 31 kWp, the cost of subsidies decreases by 58,000 €, a 50% reduction, with household savings increasing by 6%. At 58 kWp, the need for additional support checks is eliminated, increasing household savings by 65% but with a lower NPV of 22,500 €. The largest viable system, 75 kWp, increases average household savings by 82%. This approach also leads to a net reduction in GHG emissions, engaging previously excluded households in the energy transition.

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The authors regret <To not have included during the publication process the acknowledgement to a project that has been part of this work and want to include in the acknowledgements part: This work was partially supported by the Grant TED2021-129722B-C31 (ALIVE-DER), funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by “European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR”. >. The authors would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused.

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This study explores the complexities surrounding the adoption of decentralised Renewable Energy Technologies in Spain, crucial for transitioning towards a renewable energy-driven economy. Through a systematic review of both scientific and grey literature, key factors influencing adoption were identified. Utilising the Analytic Network Process method, this research highlights political will, technological maturity, and fiscal incentives as primary drivers. These findings underscore the importance of mature technologies and incentivisation strategies in expediting adoption. Conversely, addressing barriers necessitates a multifaceted approach, presenting challenges for policy formulation. However, the analysis reveals a positive cascade effect, wherein strengthening primary drivers positively impacts others within their domain. This pattern is mirrored in the barriers. Furthermore, the study reveals consistent factors across technologies, adopter types, and regions. The three-axis analysis shows the largest differences in terms of the type of adopter, followed by the type of technology. The smallest differences are found by region, emphasising the unifying influence of the EU framework. This suggests a unified approach to policy design and promotion efforts.

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Future power systems, in which generation will come almost entirely from variable Renewable Energy Sources (vRES), will be characterized by weather-driven supply and flexible demand. In a simulation of the future Dutch power system, we analyze whether there are sufficient incentives for market-driven investors to provide a sufficient level of security of supply, considering the profit-seeking and myopic behavior of investors. We co-simulate two agent-based models (ABM), one for generation expansion and one for the operational time scale. The results suggest that in a system with a high share of vRES and flexibility, prices will be set predominantly by the demand’s willingness to pay, particularly by the opportunity cost of flexible hydrogen electrolyzers. The demand for electric heating could double the price of electricity in winter, compared to summer, and in years with low vRES could cause shortages. Simulations with stochastic weather profiles increase the year-to-year variability of cost recovery by more than threefold and the year-to-year price variability by more than tenfold compared to a scenario with no weather uncertainty. Dispatchable technologies have the most volatile annual returns due to high scarcity rents during years of low vRES production and diminished returns during years with high vRES production. We conclude that in a highly renewable EOM, investors would not have sufficient incentives to ensure the reliability of the system. If they invested in such a way to ensure that demand could be met in a year with the lowest vRES yield, they would not recover their fixed costs in the majority of years.@en

Gender studies have highlighted how policies and actions that are not drafted and planned with a gender perspective tend to produce a gender bias. Climate policies are not an exception. Measures to mitigate and adapt cities to climate change might lead to undesired outcomes regarding gender equality or, in contrast, may help to improve equality. Ideally, cities should prioritise actions that aim to reduce their carbon footprint but also help promote gender equality. The aim is to facilitate the inclusion of gender perspective in the 100 Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities by 2030 European Mission. We propose a Multicriteria Decision-Making Method to assess urban policies and relate them to climate and gender criteria. We describe urban decarbonisation policies with non-negative gender outcomes and compare their impact when using climate and gender criteria. The objective is to analyse how the prioritisation of actions varies from different perspectives: one taking into account the field of expertise of the different experts and the other taking into account the different typologies of criteria separately. A DEMATEL-ANP technique is used to determine how policies contribute to climate action and gender equality. Experts in different areas and city planning respond to the DEMATEL-ANP model by comparing and relating criteria and actions. The results show which policies have a significant potential to reduce cities’ carbon footprint and increase gender equality. Prioritisation of policies changes when only gender criteria or climate criteria are considered. Regarding the former, it can be concluded that gender criteria will contribute to closing the gender gap while having a widening impact on decarbonisation. Nevertheless, including gender criteria is not enough to avoid bias, and multidisciplinary teams must participate in the decision-making process.@en

This research raises the possibility for households in energy poverty to participate in energy communities to alleviate their energy costs, having their investment costs paid by public institutions. The study starts from the current solution for vulnerable households based on public subsidies to reduce energy costs, which neither addresses the problem's causes nor improves the residential energy systems' environmental profile. It compares the business-as-usual solution, energy checks, with the participation of vulnerable households in energy communities. We simulate a renewable energy community composed of vulnerable households to calculate the usefulness of this solution. he chosen vulnerable households are doubly vulnerable because they are older people experiencing social isolation and loneliness. The results show that participating in energy communities can be a better economic option for public institutions than paying energy subsidies. Moreover, most households increase their savings, and in all cases, it results in a net reduction of GHG emissions, engaging households unable to participate in their current situation in the energy transition.@en

The intermittent nature of the renewable energy sources with the greater potential, wind and solar, requires dealing with temporary mismatches between demand and supply. The object of this study is to assess the Spanish energy plan from a system perspective regarding the energy storage requirements to meet electricity demand with high penetrations of renewable energy generation. We use a model that builds on existing literature and commercial software and integrates features such as demand response modelling, the correlation between reserve requirements and the technology mix, and hydrogen as an energy vector. This representation is applied to the Spanish electricity system to assess the consistency of the targets of the national energy strategy. Several scenarios of costs, demand and variation of other parameters are simulated to analyse their relative influence on the solution of minimum cost, especially assessing the sensitivity of energy storage capacity. The simulation results show that the Spanish goals for decarbonising the electricity system are based on optimistic assumptions. Also, energy storage will play a more important role than expected, and the use of hydrogen for energy storage is only needed for a 100% penetration of renewable energies.@en

This research aims to diagnose the energy performance of buildings in València and identify areas where energy efficiency can be improved. The energy performance results of all 129,487 EPCs in the city were mapped and compared to socioeconomic variables to gain insights into the reasons behind the results. The study reveals that the city's building stock has poor energy performance, attributed to the lack of building standards during the city's expansion in the 1960s and 1970s. The worst energy performances are observed in the peripheral districts, particularly in the city's northern half, where low-income and low-renting rates are common, resulting in reduced investment capacity for individuals to retrofit their homes. To promote quick dissemination of measures to retrofit households, they must be adequate, economical, and replicable, avoiding social, administrative, and economic barriers. The study highlights the importance of EPCs as an objective tool to diagnose the energy efficiency of a city's building stock. Policymakers can use the findings to identify areas that require improvements and evaluate the appropriate actions to improve the building stock's energy performance. This study presents significant potential to reduce buildings’ energy demand and achieve climate goals through EPCs.@en

The adoption of distributed energy resources such as PV cells, electric vehicles and batteries in electric grids is increasing steadily. This brings new challenges for distribution networks. The current network tariffs were not designed for these types of usage and, in many cases, they are not adequate anymore. Thus, many new tariff frameworks have been proposed. In this paper, we focus on the question of how to assess whether a given tariff framework fulfills its objectives. We propose to use quantitative indicators for performance assessment. We give examples of indicators for common objectives and demonstrate how they can be derived from a cost-accounting methodology for distribution networks.@en

Local energy communities require tools to select their most fitting community members, power-sharing strategy and technologies for their goals. This work aims to develop a model and a methodology to optimise local energy communities. We evaluate the presence of a battery energy storage system with different capacities and ownership options. Besides, we test two different sharing strategies like static and variable coefficients. Finally, we characterise local energy communities’ demand by comparing residential and commercial loads and varying the number of consumption points. We apply the method to a case study consisting of a 100 kWp photovoltaic installation in Valencia simulated with an hourly resolution for a whole year. We use real consumption data from households and commercial buildings and the current administrative requirements, obtaining the flows and status of each component within the local energy community at every moment. We assess each alternative's economic performance, autarchy degree, and the amount of avoided greenhouse gasses emissions. Results indicate that a local energy community well optimised can fulfil economic, environmental or self-consumption goals. Results only advise installing a storage to increase the degree of self-consumption. Moreover, we obtain the best financial and environmental results in large communities with a 75% residential consumption.@en

Renewable energy sources such as PV solar or wind power are intermittent and non-dispatchable. Massive integration of these resources into the electric mix poses some challenges to meeting power generation with demand. Hence, improving power generation forecasting has raised much interest. This work assesses the market value of enhanced PV solar power generation forecasting. Then, we analyse the different agents present in the electricity system. We link the studied agents to the proposed market values based on both analyses. Improving the accuracy of RES forecasting has massive potential as the sector grows and new agents arise. It can have reactive values like reducing imbalances or proactive values such as participating in intraday markets or exercising energy arbitrage. However, accurate forecasting can also lead to opportunistic values that can be exploited by malicious agents if they are not adequately regulated.@en

Cities consume two-thirds of the energy supply, and 70% of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions come from urban environments. Positive Energy Districts are innovative tools to achieve energy and climate neutrality in cities. Positive Energy Districts are regions or neighbourhoods with a positive annual energy balance, obtained mainly through energy efficiency and energy generation from renewables. Urban Waterfronts are extended areas close to the sea, which makes them suitable for several types of production with renewables, therefore seeming to be a suitable location to develop Positive Energy Districts. This paper proposes a method that combines strategic planning for project management and the procedure for energy audits to design the optimal district configuration. The study presents and analyses the case of La Marina de València, a district in a Mediterranean city. Three strategic scenarios, both technically feasible and with a positive energy balance, are presented. All the alternatives include PV and switching to light-emitting diode in lighting. The different strategies presented together with a sensitivity analysis facilitate the decision-making process in energy planning and establish a common pathway to achieve Positive Energy Districts in Urban Water Fronts. The results suggest that urban waterfronts are uniquely suited to achieve a positive annual energy balance, thus emerging as a crucial springboard to provide traction to the positive energy districts policy agenda.@en

Off-grid renewable energy grids will contribute to the achievement of SDG 7 on universal energy access, especially in off-grid communities. But the scarcity of resources for development aid requires very tight designs that minimize the cost of investment and operation of the mini-grid. To do this, the future energy demand of the community must be analysed very well, which is very difficult due to the lack of previous data. In the literature, two main approaches to analyse future energy demand, deterministic and stochastic methodologies. In this article, we compare both methodologies for a real case study in Honduras and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. Although the deterministic approach requires less information and less mathematical processing, it generates less accurate results. In contrast, the stochastic approach consumes more resources but gives more realistic results for the correct design of the mini-grid. In conclusion, the deterministic approach methods can be useful for the early stages of the project, when the investment is being sized. But for the advanced phases of the project, when the installation is being designed, the stochastic approach is recommended.@en

This paper inquiries into the role of place in shaping urban transformative capacity to advance urban sustainability transitions. The urban transformative capacity notion developed by Wolfram (2016) provides us with a holistic framework to reconceptualize and address the specific contextual conditions that become relevant in a city to advance path-deviant changes towards sustainability. By comparing the energy and agri-food socio-technical systems in the city of València (Spain), insights have been gained into key contextual factors shaping urban transformative capacity; specifically, the previous local historical trajectories regarding each socio-technical system, the role of local social movements and local government as articulator of the different components of the framework. Additionally, the way different accounts of sustainability coexist and the interaction between different socio-technical systems at urban level appear as critical issues.@en

The transport sector is answerable for around a quarter of the global CO2 emissions sent into the atmosphere, and 50% of the greenhouse gases in the cities. Considering a staggered introduction of renewable sources in the electricity mix, the introduction of electric vehicles (EVs) in the urban transport network arises as a necessary environmental solution. However, their integration is facing a wide range of barriers, many of them only qualitatively known, or uncertain. This paper presents a multicriteria methodology to assess such obstacles to the electrification of urban transport of Mediterranean flat medium cities. This analysis considers context analysis, literature review, and the application of the Multi Criteria Decision Making Method: Analytic Network Process, with the aid of a panel of experts representing quadruple helix involvement (Government, Business, Society and Academia). As a case study, the city of Valencia (Spain) was chosen, which has been in a deep transition of mobility in recent decades. Results revealed that the most influential barriers turned out to be the insufficient subsidies for EVs’ development, the battery autonomy power and the CapEx of batteries. Moreover, private passenger transport followed by freight transport ranked as the most affected urban transport alternatives.@en

Demand response is a key element of future power systems due to its capacity to defer grid investments, improve demand participation in the market, and absorb renewable energy source variations. In this regard, demand response can play an important role in delivering ancillary services to power systems. The lack of standardization and ancillary services programs prepared for traditional generators have blocked the participation of demand in these services. Nowadays, increasing needs to ensure the security of supply, renewable fluctuations, and information and communication technology advances are boosting the interest in demand response products to deliver ancillary services. While countries have had lengthy experience with these programs, others are starting from almost zero to develop these programs. To our knowledge, no analysis or standardized comparison exists of the different parameters and prices of demand response in ancillary services among different countries. Our study reviews more than 20 power systems around the world and their programs to classify them according to standard demand response parameters. At the end of the paper we discuss the main characteristics and prices that face demand response in ancillary services markets and a series of policy recommendations to policymakers to improve the deployment on demand participation in ancillary services.@en

Off grid electrification is key to achieving universal electricity access. Despite the potential of biomass gasifiers as a clean technology to ensure reliable systems, they are not as well looked upon as their advantages suggest. In particular, the software HOMER, which researchers and technicians use the most to simulate and design Microgrids, does not include biomass gasification among its simulation technologies. Although some authors did simulate biomass gasifiers in HOMER, the necessary parameters and procedures to calculate and include them in the tool remain unclear, non-replicable, and leave open research questions as regards modelling. Using the inbuilt Biogas power plant modules in HOMER, this paper presents a set of steps to include the technical and economic parameters to simulate fuelling an electric generator through the syngas produced in a downdraft biomass gasification plant. Two case studies of isolated rural communities in Honduras and Zambia show the viability of the procedure. These case studies also confirm the technical and economic viability of islanded biomass-photovoltaic hybrid renewable energy microgrids. In both cases, the energy demand supplied and distributed by the microgrid had a Levelized Cost of Energy lower than the alternative of extending the electric grid to the communities.@en