Fabio Monforti

European Commission | ec · Joint Research Centre (JRC)

A major change in the structure of the European Union's energy mix has been underway for the past two decades: oil still dominates, but Renewables and Biofuels are making marked gains. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has created geopolitical and strategic turmoil in the European energy sector and thus also in our country: gas consumption is decrea...

This study, performed under the umbrella of the Task Force on Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollution (TF-HTAP), responds to the need of the global and regional atmospheric modelling community of having a mosaic emission inventory of air pollutants that conforms to specific requirements: global coverage, long time series, spatially distributed emiss...

Gli orizzonti della transizione ecologica sono in grado di renderci indipendenti dai combustibili fossili, migliorando la sicurezza energetica e stabilizzando i costi di approvvigionamento. La decarbonizzazione è in grado di ridurre rischi di mancati approvvigionamenti energetici e rischi sanitari oltre che quelli legati all’intensificarsi di event...

Cities and local authorities are key players in addressing climate change. Since 2008, the European Commission (EC) endorses and supports their efforts through the Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (CoM) and notably through the provision of capacity building, technical assistance, sharing of best practices and peer learning opportunities. T...

This report presents the fossil CO2 emission time series of the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) from 1970 until 2021, together with CO2 emissions and removals from land use and forestry for period 1990 to 2020. For the first time, the report uses IEA calculated fossil-fuel CO2 emissions directly where appropriate, rather...

Despite the positive impacts of mitigation policies, air pollution is still a global issue of concern. This article builds on data presented in EDGAR (Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research) v5.0 database, exploring the influence of technology and regulation incorporation on air pollutant (NO x , PM 2.5 , SO X , NH 3) emissions in the E...

The Global Covenant of Mayors in Southeast Asia (GCoM SEA) supports Malaysian local authorities in the climate challenge and in their efforts in building more sustainable and resilient communities. It is the "regional covenant" of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM). Under the GCoM SEA, local authorities are invited to take a...

Cities and local authorities are key players in implementing the clean energy transition and addressing climate change. Since 2008, the European Commission endorses and supports their efforts through the Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (CoM) and notably through the provision of capacity building, technical assistance, sharing of best prac...

The report presents information about four pollutants that are not currently regulated by the European Air Quality legislation and an atmospheric marker for biomass burning. They were selected for the prominent role they could play in the revision of the current Ambient Air Quality Directives. For each compound, their physico-chemical properties an...

The Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research provides emission time series from 1970 until 2020 for fossil CO2 and until 2018 for non-CO2 GHGs for all countries, and covers the emissions and removals from land use and forestry for the years 2000 to 2015. This report is contributing to the Paris Agreement process with an independent and...

Over the last three decades, socio-economic, demographic and technological transitions have been witnessed throughout the world, modifying both sectorial and geographical distributions of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Understanding these trends is central to the design of current and future climate change mitigation policies, requiring up-to-date...

The Paris Agreement has underlined the role of cities in combating climate change. The Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM) is the largest international initiative dedicated to promoting climate action at a city level, covering globally over 10 000 cities and almost half the population of the European Union (EU) by end of March 202...

The European power system will have to change significantly in next decades to meet the ambitious targets set by the upcoming European Climate Law. In particular, intermittent renewable energy will be increasingly injected in the system creating potential stability problems. Already in the last five years it has become evident that if the grid expa...

The Regional Covenant of Mayors for Mediterranean (CoM Med) is an alliance of local municipalities from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, supporting cities committed to develop a climate resilient society. The CoM Med, supported by the European Commission, is part of the Global Covenant of Mayors (GCoM), the largest coalition of citie...

The Paris Agreement has underlined the role of cities in combating climate change. The Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (GCoM) is the largest dedicated international initiative to promote climate action at city level, covering globally over 10,000 cities and almost half the population of the European Union (EU) by end of March 2020....

We have developed a new global food emissions database (EDGAR-FOOD) estimating greenhouse gas (GHG; CO2, CH4, N2O, fluorinated gases) emissions for the years 1990–2015, building on the Emissions Database of Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR), complemented with land use/land-use change emissions from the FAOSTAT emissions database. EDGAR-FOOD provi...

Nel 2020 l’Europa raggiungerà probabilmente l’obiettivo del 20% di energie rinnovabili e per il 2030 è già pronto il nuovo obiettivo del 32%. Obiettivi ancora più ambiziosi sono attualmente in discussione. Altre na- zioni e regioni del mondo seguono e, anche se con un po’ di affanno, le energie rinnovabili stanno entrando nel nostro quotidiano. Si...

The Covenant of Mayors (CoM) is a successful European initiative which encourages local authorities to be proactive in fighting climate change. Recently, it expanded to cover adaptation and energy access/poverty and became a global initiative. In this study we investigate an additional perspective: synergies and trade-offs between climate and air q...

The Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research provides emission time series from 1970 until 2019 forfossil CO2 for all countries. This report is contributing to the Paris Agreement process with an independent andquantitative view of global fossil CO2 emissions

The Atlas shows, for selected cities, the likely effects of the implementation of “Traffic Policies” intended to reduce urban NO2 concentrations. As NO2 pollution in urban areas is mainly caused by traffic, the analysis focuses on assessing the relative contribution to the NO2 concentration in ambient air from different types of vehicles. The resul...

This report analyses the main sectors involved in air pollution generation and provides a first assessment and prioritisation of the main ongoing or foreseeable structural changes that may pose a threat to the European air quality in Europe. In particular the following questions have been addressed with the support of selected experts: "Is it true...

The Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research provides emission time series from 1970 until 2018 for CO2 and until 2015 for non-CO2 GHGs for all countries. This report is contributing to the Paris Agreement process with an independent and quantitative view of global GHG emissions.

The SHERPA tool was used to assess the major pollution sources and the geographical areas impacting on the PM 2.5 of the main cities in the Danube and Western Balkans regions. The activity sectors influencing most the PM 2.5 levels in the study area are energy production (22%), agriculture (19%), residential combustion (16%) and road transport (7%)...

The Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research provides emission time series from 1970 until 2018 for CO2 and until 2015 for non-CO2 GHGs for all countries. This report is contributing to the Paris Agreement process with an independent and quantitative view of global GHG emissions.

We define a family of environmental footprints. • We identify overlaps between different footprints. • We analyse how they relate to the nine planetary boundaries. • We discuss the relation with SDGs, WEFE nexus and ecosystem services. • We argue that the footprint family is a flexible framework. Editor: Damia Barcelo The number of publications on...

The number of publications on environmental footprint indicators has been growing rapidly, but with limited efforts to integrate different footprints into a coherent framework. Such integration is important for comprehensive understanding of environmental issues, policy formulation and assessment of trade-offs between different environmental concer...

This report is an initiative of the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the science and knowledge service of the European Commission (EC), supported by the Commission’s Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO). It highlights drivers shaping the urban future, identifying both the key challenges cities will have to address and the streng...

The emissions from transport and residential sectors have significant shares in total emissions of Europe. In this study, we identified key priorities in support to the EU Macro-regional Strategies implementation based on an ex-ante assessment focusing on two EU macro-regions: Adriatic-Ionian (AIR) and Alpine (ALP).

This paper provides estimates of available agricultural residues at the European level. It complements previous studies by expanding the geographical study area to 36 European countries, and improving the methodology by incorporating temporal variability of the theoretical potential resources and taking into consideration technical and environmenta...

Sustainable use of biomass in residential sector In the framework of the EU Strategy for the Danube Region (EUSDR), biomass burning for heat production in households has emerged as a major issue where a better balance between “decarbonisation” benefits and negative impacts on air quality, the environment and human health is needed. This report...

The study compares costs and benefits of Arctic observation systems. Ten case studies show that annually economic benefits exceed by at least 50% investments. The analytical framework can be further developed for quantifying societal benefits from local to global scales.

Anaerobic digestion is increasingly used worldwide to generate energy from biogas, bringing significant economic and environmental benefits. In particular, in the European Union (EU), biogas can contribute significantly in several countries to reach the renewable energy targets. This study provides an assessment of the spatial distribution of the b...

An increasing number of cities and local governments adhere to transnational initiatives on climate change mitigation, but quantification of their contribution to the Paris Agreement commitments is lacking. To address this, the climate mitigation trajectory to 2050 of Covenant of Mayors (CoM) signatories has been studied. As of October 2017 there...

The goal of IMOBAR is to provide to policy makers with evidence to support long-term investments in Arctic observing systems and thereby inform the decision-making process. The main output of IMOBAR will be an evaluation of the costs and societal benefits of Arctic observing systems by analysing the value chain of a selected number of essential var...

This study is a first attempt to evaluate how the major efforts made by several European cities in the frame of the Covenant of Mayors (CoM) initiative can impact the air pollution levels in the participating cities. CoM is by no mean one of the major cities initiatives aimed at mitigating climate change, supporting local authorities in the impleme...

The development of renewable energy sources (RES) is a priority for the EU. This report provides a compilation of the different support schemes and measures implemented by he EU countries since the 2009 Renewable Energy Directive (RED) came into force. It focuses to a large extent on the information provided under RED's formal reporting process, co...

The term ‘wicked problems’ was coined by Rittel and Webber [1] in the ‘70s to describe problems of public policy which are influenced by many dynamic social and political factors as well as biophysical complexities [2]. Wicked problems are characterized by “Uncertainty over consequences, diverse and multiple engaged interests, conflicting knowledge...

Mitigating the big challenges of access to clean water, energy and poverty in Africa requires integrated solutions. The analysis of issues related to the water, energy, food and the ecosystem through a nexus approach, has attracted the interest of scientists, policy-makers and the private sector. The present Technical Report examines the potential...

The need to integrate higher shares of renewables in the EU energy sector brings into discussion the way the renewable technologies/sources have been supported to date. Support schemes are currently the major drivers for investment in the EU electricity sector, while investments in grid assets are driven mainly by regulation that guarantees investo...

The NREAPs collection is sourced from national renewable energy action plans submitted in year 2010 by each EU Member State as an obligation under Article 4 of the Directive 2009/28/EC. The collection provides information on the expected development of renewable energy in three main sectors: Electricity, Heating/Cooling and Transport. https://dat...

The energy sector accounts for the lion’s share (55 %) of greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union (EU). While EU emissions had fallen by 22.1 % in 2015 compared with 1990, and continue to fall, the bloc’s economy grew by 27 % over that period. Since the Renewable Energy Directive (RED) entered into force, use of renewables has continued to g...

The adequate modelling of power systems under heavily penetration of Renewable Energy sources crucially depends on the accurate representation of the spatial and temporal features of intermittent power resources supplying the system. In the case of wind energy, two main ingredients are needed for a suitable assessment of its temporal features: a de...

The growing share of electricity production from solar and mainly wind resources constantly increases the stochastic nature of the power system. Modelling the high share of renewable energy sources – and in particular wind power – crucially depends on the adequate representation of the intermittency and characteristics of the wind resource which is...

This Policy Brief is related to the publication - Renewable Energy Deployment in the European union

This report presents a snapshot of renewable energy development and progress expected by 2020, as forecasted in the EU Member States’ reporting under the Renewable Energy Directive and projected in the EU Reference 2016 and EUCO27 scenarios. The report compares the progress achieved between 2005 and 2015, as reported by EU Member States in their pr...

The design goals of the developed software are described followed by its architecture, which is presented in detail. The GUI-based interface supports a variety of environmental management problems and can provide best practices in a timely manner. The toolkit is generic and applicable to any scientific field. It was applied on a renewable energy (R...

The presentation is related to the bioenergy policy framework in the EU further to Renewable Energy Directive and related issues with sustainability criteria.

EMHIRES is the first publicly available European wind power generation dataset derived from meteorological sources that is available on NUTS-2 level. It was generated applying an innovative methodology capturing local geographical information to generate meteorologically derived wind power time series at high temporal and spatial resolution. This a...

The Covenant of Mayors (CoM) was launched in 2008 by the European Commission to support the efforts deployed by local authorities in the implementation of sustainable energy and climate policies. At 4 September 2016, 6201 local authorities from 51 countries had joined the initiative, representing 213 million inhabitants. Today, the JRC analysis of...

The presentation gives an overview of renewable energy deployment in the EU further to Renewable Energy Directive. The presentation covers the deployment of renewable energy until 2016.

The presentation illustrates the use of Tableau software in discovering significant and meaningful patterns in data; revealing data at several levels of details; giving more dimensions of information; putting data on multi perspective levels; comparison of data sets; multivariate analysis; quantitative information; categorical information; data con...

Questo è un libro che dà la scossa: un salutare elettroshock alimentato però dal sole e dal vento. La vera storia dei sistemi energetici, dal legno al carbone, dal petrolio fino all’attuale rivoluzione delle fonti rinnovabili. Badate, questa non è una visione del futuro, ma la nitida descrizione -con parole, immagini e infografiche- del presente....

Sustainable energy in the Danube region as an integral part of the EU 2020 strategy - Analysis of NREAPs, NEEAPs and renewable energy progress reports of Danube region countries. 2016 EUR 27730 EN

To assess the possibility of a combined use of solar and wind energy over Europe, a continental-scale dataset, with high spatial and temporal resolution and covering three years of data (2012–14), is analyzed. The 100-m wind is taken from the ECMWF analyses/short-range forecasts. To obtain hourly values of potentially generated electricity, wind is...

Electricity production in Mediterranean islands currently depends heavily on imported fossil fuels. This strategy has several disadvantages and has been accused of hindering the islands' sustainable development. In the present research an integrated approach to increase solar photovoltaic (PV) systems' (SPVS) share in the energy mix of Mediterranea...

The amount of wind energy entering the European electricity transmission system is expected to increase in next decades. Indeed, Europe is on the path towards a deep transformation of its energy system, triggered in part by Directive 2009/28/EC (also known as the Renewable Energy Directive), in which wind energy will play an important role. Europe...

Bread represents a staple food in many parts of the world including Europe. Depending on the region of origin and the respective cultural heritage bread is made with different ingredients and is consumed in various forms. This work consists of an environmental sustainability assessment of 21 different types of bread, representing a wide spectrum of...

Key global energy, environmental and sustainability targets are closely related to the development of Renewable Energy Sources (RES). This includes reduction of Greenhouse Gas emissions and safe energy provision in a sustainable manner. The integration of RES in the energy mix needs to overcome the technical challenges that are related to grid's op...

Recognizing the issues of land shortage and growing concerns for protecting natural lands, installers and project developers, with the help of scientists and engineers, continuously try to locate alternative spots for photovoltaic (PV) system installations. In the present paper a novel approach is suggested and analysed: installing solar PV systems...