In 2024 energy consumption increased by 1% compared to 2023, driven by transport (+3%) and buildings (+2.5%). CO₂ emissions, on the other hand, decreased by 3% year-on-year but restarted growing in the last six months (+1.5%; but +3.5% in the transport and civil sectors) after two years of decline.

ENEA has participated in creating a virtual model to train employees, manage deactivating and decommissioning (D&D) activities and perform verifications concerning the final characterization and release phases of nuclear sites. The activity, which consists in the development of a “digital twin” (DT), was carried out as part of the European project CLEANDEM, which includes 11 EU countries.

ENEA has developed a high-resolution, real-time modeling and monitoring system forecasting pollen seasons particularly for grasses, olive, birch, ragweed and alder, among the main culprits of seasonal allergies. The study, that led to the modeling innovation, was conducted as part of the project MEETOUT [1], in collaboration with the University of Verona, Arianet, ATS Milan and ARPA Veneto, and its outcomes, published in the journal Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, pave the way for improving prevention and management of respiratory diseases related to pollen exposure.

Increasingly accurate predictions of photovoltaic energy production thanks to artificial intelligence (AI) is the outcome of a study published by an ENEA research team in the scientific journal Energies.

 “We have demonstrated the efficacy of our approach using actual production data from a photovoltaic plant located at the ENEA Research Center in Portici (Naples), which showed improved accuracy of photovoltaic production forecasts,” explained study co-author Amedeo Buonanno, researcher in the ENEA Smart Grid and Energy Networks Laboratory at the Department of Energy Technologies and Renewable Sources.

The first data on traceability and circularity in the fashion industry, crucial for the introduction of the Digital Product Passport required by European legislation, has been provided the data collection platform “TRICK”. Created by a consortium of 31 partners, including ENEA, the TRICK platform offers an innovative tool to track -through the use of blockchain technology - the whole lifespan of a garment, from raw material to end of life. The objective is to support SMEs in collecting secured data for products and services, assessing their environmental footprint (PEF), quality of production processes, health and circularity of raw materials used. ENEA created an ‘holistic’ data model at the basis of the platform, defining how traceability and sustainability data should be collected, connected and organized to return aggregated product information.

Reducing the health risks and the environmental impact associated with an increasingly widespread use of synthetic materials, like plastics and chemicals, is the goal of the EU funded  FHERITALE project , which includes the METROFOOD-RI research infrastructure, coordinated by ENEA, the Interuniversity Consortium of Metal Protein Magnetic Resonances (CIRMMP) of the University of Florence (coordinator), INSTRUCT-ERIC, AnaEE ERIC and EIRENE.