Press releases and news

There is a shortage of many raw materials and when these can be found, prices are exorbitant. The causes are varied: the growing increase in demand; the climate crisis, which diminishes the capacity of ecosystems to provide resources and intensifies certain needs; the pandemic, which has imposed a lengthy setback on the global economy; and the conflict in Ukraine, which has exacerbated Europe’s energy fragility. The solution exists and is called the circular economy. But it has not taken off yet.

Some anti-Covid measures adopted at the beginning of the pandemic – such as the lockdown and traffic restrictions – led to a dramatic decline in air pollution, with consequent health benefits as well. An international study on air quality trends in 47 European cities—including Rome, Milan, Paris, London and Barcelona—highlights this. Carried out by numerous research institutions, including ENEA, the study was published in Nature.

Measuring air pollution and landscape visibility in Italian nature parks. This is the objective of project “Visibility”, coordinated by the Forestry, Environmental and Agri-food Command Unit (CUFA) of the Carabinieri in partnership with the ENEA Air Pollution laboratory. The project will apply, for the first time in Italy, the procedure adopted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for measuring visibility in America’s nature reserves.

Applications to participate in the international competition "Agrivoltaic for Noah's Ark", which will award the "best agrivoltaic garden", are open until 20 June 2022. The initiative is promoted by ENEA, the NeoruraleHub company, the National Institute of Architecture (IN/Arch), ETA Florence Renewable Energies and the Italian Association of Landscape Architecture (AIAPP). With the support of the Ministry of Ecological Transition, Lombardy Region, Municipality of

Integrating electronics in car upholstery by using hi-tech fabrics made with carbon fiber scraps is one of the objectives of the industrial research project TEX-STYLE, which includes among its members ENEA and the Fiat Research Center (CRF) as coordinator.

2021 was the year of the rebound in energy consumption (+8% with respect to 2020), despite the unprecedented increase in electricity and gas prices. This is what emerges from ENEA's Quarterly Analysis of the Italian energy system, which also highlights a sharp rise in CO2 emissions (+8.5%; 70% of CO2 emissions “lost” in 2020 for the pandemic has been recovered) and a sharp worsening (-27%) of the ISPRED index, a composite index developed by the Agency to measure the energy transition on the basis of the trend in energy security, energy prices and CO2 emissions. In addition, the share of renewable sources is now below 19% of final consumption, down by more than one percentage point compared to the peak reached in 2020.