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Circular economy requires a material-specific and systemic approach in the design and management of production processes, as indicated in the European Commission Action Plan adopted in 2015 to promote global competitiveness, sustainable economic growth and create new jobs. This new approach implicates a more efficient use of resources within the entire production chain that aims to "close the loop" of the product life cycle. It promotes a self-regeneration that turns waste into resources. In this way, the recycling and reuse of recycled materials is constantly increasing and the demand for raw materials is decreasing, allowing waste to be contained. The concepts of the circular economy were applied to develop a two-region partial equilibrium model of an automotive manufacturing plant based on the ETSAP MARKAL-EFOM (TIMES) generator, aimed at identifying more efficient and sustainable configurations of the production system through a scenario analysis, taking into account energy recovery and recycling of plastic waste material from production processes as well as reducing CO2 pollutant emissions. The multi-region approach allowed modelling two industrial units, the Assembly Unit and the Plastic Unit, as two different modelling "regions" with independent production of electricity, heat and cooling. Such "regions" are connected through unidirectional "trades" processes, i.e. the components produced in the Plastic Unit and he polypropylene waste, which represent a secondary input material. The model was calibrated based on real consumption data for the years 2015, 2016 and 2017 and optimized over a time horizon of ten years. Five medium-term evolutionary scenarios addressed energy and materials recovery and evaluated the feasibility of innovative technological solutions: photovoltaic, energy recovery from the molding process of polypropylene components, production of syngas from waste materials, recovery of polypropylene waste, use of pigmented polypropylene for bumper molding.

27 p. Cities are widely recognised as being pivotal to fight climate change. They magnify the drivers of climate change, experience the impacts and also concentrate the highest room for action. Although urban areas are broadly claimed to be climate leaders, there is no archetype of right actions given the highly contextual differences among them. Yet, the how and why cities respond to global environmental challenges in the context of increasingly competitive economies needs further research. In this paper we aim at advancing in this regard by assessing the state of the art on urban climate actions in two European Mediterranean Countries: Spain and Italy that face similar climate change challenges. Based on an extensive review of documents, we analyse mitigation and adaptation plans of 26 Spanish and 32 Italian Urban Audit cities, as representative samples. Our results show relevant differences between Spanish and Italian cities in terms of the starting time of their climate actions as well their implementation. We concur with existing literature in that mitigation is more advanced than adaptation actions and take evidence in both countries and we also demonstrate that international and national networking initiatives are being instrumental in engaging cities in climate action.

47 p. Cities are widely recognised as being pivotal to fight climate change. Cities magnify the drivers of climate change, experience the impacts and also concentrate the highest room for action. Given the 70% of the global emissions that cities are responsible for, national governments are unable to meet their international commitments for addressing mitigation and adaptation without the action and cooperation of cities. In turn, the capacity of local governments to address climate change is largely determined by the institutional architecture within which they are integrated. As a result, the relationship between the different arenas of authority and the integration of cities in national and international networks is considered critical in shaping the global capacity to govern climate change. This work aims to understand how multi-level climate governance and alliances of cities (national and international) are influencing the climate change capacity and performance of municipalities. This has been done by focusing on two national contexts of the European Union, Italy and Spain, in which climate policy, multi-level governance frameworks, the effects of the national and international networks of cities, and the climate response of cities are analysed through an extensive review of scientific and grey literature, and institutional documents. The results concur with existing literature on the importance of constructing collaborative multi-level climate frameworks at the national scale, that fully integrate the local level, in order to support cities to develop consistent climate action and raise awareness of the responsibility they have in this policy field.