Renewable Energy Community models for internal woodlands areas using biomass, thermal and electric carriers

In an international context characterized by an energy and environmental crisis, the Renewable Energy Community (REC) is emerging as a key tool to face current emergencies through energy transition. Indeed, a REC aims at sharing among its members the energy locally generated from Renewable Energy Sources (RESs) to maximize environmental, economic, and social benefits for the same community. Nowadays, the REC definition provided by the European Commission concerns only the electrical energy, but the same sharing approach could be extended to the thermal energy, further increasing the benefits for the community. This work presents the design of a REC for a village in an internal woodland area, in central Italy. In this context, the energy sharing project will be crucial also to encourage the repopulation of such land areas thus counteracting the general population trend of last decades. Therefore, the REC design must aim at (i) reducing the current costs of energy carriers, (ii) achieving local renewable energy production targets, (iii) spreading the culture of environmental sustainability, (iv) revitalize local economy and (iv) reducing environmental impact of urban settlements, raising the awareness of the citizens in these aspects. The suggested REC model pursues the abovementioned benefits taking advantage of local renewable resources (biomasses, running water, and solar energy) for producing both electrical and thermal energy to be shared among the community members. Thus, the vast forest crops of this area can be used as green fuel for a biomass cogeneration plant, placed to serve a district heating network for heat transmission, and to the REC for electricity production. Several scenarios were simulated with specific tools to find the best solutions in terms of maximum shared energy and economic return for the community.