Circular economy is a new economic model that aims to overcome the linear “take, make, dispose” pattern of consumption, decoupling global economic development from the consumption of finite resources. It is a broad concept that includes all actions that aim to maintain products, components and materials at their highest level of use and value over time, through waste prevention, recycling, revaluation and cascading uses.
The objective of this work is to quantify the potential contribution of this framework to the decarbonization of the Italian energy system through a scenario approach using the TIMES-RSE model.
The analysis focuses on four sectors: transportation, household appliances, construction and glass. For each sector, a review of the circular practices proposed in the literature was carried out and then used as a basis for the modeling assumptions. Each circularity measure taken into account was modeled alternatively as a new technology available for system optimization or as an exogenous change in demand for a specific commodity. The reference scenario is the Italian Long-Term Strategy (LTS).
It is shown that the modeled circularity measures can reduce final energy consumption by 6.6% in private road transport, by 16% in household appliances, by 35%, 12% and 11% in cement, steel and glass respectively. At a sector level, energy savings amount to 2.6% for transport and 6.5% for industry, while are negligible in the residential sector. Furthermore, emissions from the industrial sector are reduced by 32%, which allows the use of carbon capture and storage technologies to be halved. The economic savings are 368 billion euros, the equivalent of a 5.6% reduction in LTS system costs.