The report deals with energy efficiency methodologies and solutions in civil sector end uses: this information is important to support decision makers in defining appropriate governance policies to allow the sector to contribute to achieving the decarbonisation goals set by the Italian regulatory framework and the National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan in particular.

Regarding the residential sector, the report aims to extend the analyses carried out in 2019 on ‘energy metabolism’ through three different studies.

The first aims to describe the determinants of the spending and consumption components of households; for this purpose, three ISTAT datasets obtained from surveys on the spending, daily living habits and energy consumption of Italian households are used as input data. Significant variables (regressors) that influence household behavior are identified with ad-hoc statistical methods; subsequently, the three datasets are aggregated into a single matrix. This matrix is the starting point for the the modeling analyzed in the second point.

The second study aims at providing a ‘field characterization’ of the behavior and consumption of domestic users, which is also useful for validating the results of the study on ‘energy metabolism’. In this regard, a survey on the consumption of Italian households is carried out in collaboration with Bva-Doxa, addressing end users; the results show a strong use of autonomous natural gas systems for heating, with a greater frequency of use in the evening hours and on holidays; heat pump cooling systems are quite frequent in the sample, with an average use of 5.2 days a week in the summer period, with no significant differences between holidays and weekdays; in addition, the survey also detects variations linked to subjective perceptions and the impact of Covid-19 on energy consumption.

Finally, the third study develops the MOIRAE model ( bottom-up MOdel to compute the energy consumption of the Italian REsidential sector: Model design, validation and evaluation of electrification pathways ) for forecasting energy consumption in the Italian residential sector with a bottom-up approach. The ISTAT datasets are used as input, together with a database built through RSE internal studies and processing. The model is extended with a sociodemographic evolution sub-model which allows the results to be transposed over various years and to validate MOIRAE on a wider range of data, and allows for it to be calibrated on GSE final data for 2018. A second economic sub-model is added to support scenario analyses and identify the costs of the different domestic technologies. Following its calibration and validation, MOIRAE is applied for analyzing the electrification of the Italian residential sector with reference to 2014, as the most updated input data available are related to that year; the analysis shows that electrification of home heating alone can contribute to decarbonizing the system, as it generates a primary energy saving of 7.81 Mtoe, corresponding to -21% compared to the baseline case where there is no replacement of heat consumption and therefore a cumulative investment in fixed costs to 2040 is required that amounts to €30.4 billion, i.e., approximately €1.5 billion/year.

As regards the service sector, this report describes two works carried out with the final objective of providing an overall picture of the energy consumption of an extremely heterogeneous and continuously growing sector.

The first study aims to estimate the energy consumption of the service sector. We started from a complete reconstruction of the main components of the service sector: trade, hotels, offices, education and healthcare. The sizing of these sectors was described both in terms of structures and overall surface area, broken down by the main activities, using sources of information such as ISTAT, Osservatorio Nazionale del Commercio, Federalberghi and the Ministries. Subsequently, an average energy intensity value was reconstructed for each sector analyzed, which, applied to the first phase of the study, allowed us to reconstruct an estimate of the sector’s energy consumption. The second work concerns an in-depth investigation, carried out in collaboration with the GfK company