This ongoing project tell stories about the self-production and the exchange of energy from the territory, focuses on some virtuous and award-winning examples of sustainability involving families, small and medium-sized enterprises and large Italian energy-intensive industrial plants. The protagonists of this series are micro and macroeconomic models who have believed and invested in an innovative energy system, capable of looking to the future and bringing production closer to the demand for energy and to the social, environmental and economic needs of the territories in which they arise.
Stories of companies and territories that have moved in many different directions and have overcome exhausting difficulties (economic, regulatory and bureaucratic) to build renewable energy plants. Stories from the ground that tell the far-sighted work of some realities which, thanks to the mix of energies from natural sources, are able to produce more electrical and thermal energy than what is necessary for their needs, selling the excess to the national grid.
For these communities – many of which are “off-grid” – the urgency of energy autonomy and self-management has triggered processes to transform territories and municipalities, enhancing resources, places and abandoned lands, bringing environmental and social benefits as well as innovation technology and new attractive capabilities.
Islands of energy
Models of sustainability in the mainland
Introduction: the production of renewables in Italy
The Italian system of electricity production from renewable sources has changed profoundly in the last decade, becoming much more efficient and distributed throughout the territory. Sustainable energy sources have confirmed their leading role in the Italian energy scene, finding widespread use both for the production of electricity, for heating and cooling, and as biofuels used in various production sectors. Along the Italian peninsula there are approximately 1.35 million plants from renewable sources for a total gross power of 60.8 GW (source GSE, Terna). In terms of production, in 2021, the total contribution made by renewable sources to the Italian electricity system reached 115.7 TWh (source Terna) and represents 41.7% of the total national electricity production.
These numbers describe a country that has been able to start an alternative planning to fossil fuels, but they seem to be insufficient to face the recent challenges proposed by Europe concerning the energy transition. According to the “RepowerEU” plan, in fact, the member states of the union must «[…] drastically accelerate the clean energy transition and increase Europe’s energy independence from unreliable suppliers and volatile fossil fuels».
The European Commission’s response to the current gas market crisis envisages an increase in production from renewable sources by 2030 from the current 40% to 45%, which for Italy would mean reaching the 70GW target in a few years.
According to the “Renewables Report 2022” drawn-up by Legambiente, the installations of new plants in the last decade have been significantly lower than in the previous decade, and this growth slowed down by various factors «risks making us reach the target set for 2030, taking the installation average of the last three years equal to about 489 MW, in 143 years!».
The obstacles to the construction of new renewable plants, clarifies the Observatory on Italian Public Accounts of the University “Sacro Cuore” in Rome, involve various levels: «a) the number of public entities involved in the decisions; b) the uncertainty about the behaviour that some of these entities will maintain in assessing the various public interests to be protected; and c) the possible political oppositions that may arise in the construction of new plants», regulatory and bureaucratic obstacles that make the success of the energy transition process still very uncertain.
Islands of Energy: Models of Sustainability in the Mainland
Even if dictated by environmental reasons and energy and economic savings, the choice to consume self-produced electricity and heat also seems to be moved by a deeper, more intimate reason, that of working and producing in conciliation with the possibilities and resources that the territory can provide. Like the desire to bring back to life an abandoned ruin in the heart of the Umbrian hills and to transform it into “Podere Vallescura”, an off-grid farm and B&B nominated in 2019 by the English newspaper «The Guardian» among the best off-grid places grid to stay in Europe. Or the desire to recover an entire abandoned agricultural rural area in Guardea, in the rugged province of Terni, and to build a multifunctional centre for experimentation and training on renewable energies that today responds to the name of Energy Park Renewable (PER). An old agricultural village abandoned in the first decades of the twentieth century has now become an example of a completely self-sufficient structure from an energy point of view, with a positive impact, which houses an eco-sustainable agritourism nestled in the woods of the Umbrian hills, at the foot of the Amerini Mountains.
Microeconomic models leave room for large-scale energy projects involving larger realities and hybrid forms of production. A disused agricultural area in Sant’Alberto in the province of Ravenna, along the borders of the Po Delta, becomes the site of an experimental project of “photovoltaic grazing meadow” the only Italian example of a solar park conceived in a way that is perfectly integrated with a farm extensive range of sheep. Inside the “Solar Farm” of Sant’Alberto, one of the largest in Italy in terms of installed power and size, the sheep of the “Caseificio Buon Pastore” graze among the geometric rows of 71 hectares of solar panels, contributing to maintaining agricultural and turf areas. The Dairy was born from the idea of reclaiming and recovering an entire abandoned agricultural area, thanks also to the contribution of renewable sources.
Even the energy-intensive companies seem to have found viable models of sustainability. In Abruzzo, in Atessa in the province of Chieti, a 1MW solar park powers “Solis GreenLog”, the first energetically autonomous cold transit-point covered by a European patent which extends over an area of over 38,000 m2 divided into hangars with multi-purpose temperatures from +12°C to –80°C. «It seems a contradiction, but here we use the sun and its energy to generate cold» says the CEO Danilo Di Florio. «Ours is a vertical energy management, during the day we produce the energy that we self-consume to generate cold and the specific insulation of our centres keeps the cold during the night».
The model pursued by “Cartiere di Guarcino”, on the other hand, was that of using biofuels to power BEG, an acronym for Bio Energia Guarcino, a cogeneration plant for electrical and thermal energy which uses the residual products of vegetable oils as fuel of animal fats. Since 2006, this important economic investment has allowed BEG to guarantee 100% of the electricity needs and 70% of the thermal needs of the paper mill, as well as significantly contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.
The massive energy consumption of large manufacturing companies seems to be sustainable through the energy mix of renewable sources. Since 2008, the Loccioni company, today the world leader in mechatronics and automated robotic systems, has transformed its industrial and residential buildings in Angeli di Rosora, in the province of Ancona, into the “Leaf Community”, the first eco-sustainable community in Italy, a veritable open-air laboratory for the development of innovative technologies for energy saving and sustainability. The smart-grid electricity network that powers the factories is based on four sources: the solar parks on the roofs, the hydroelectric micro-stations along the Esino river which crosses the production plants, the pyrogasification which burns the biomass coming from the river for heat guarantee the necessary requirement and when the energy is in excess it is stored or fed into the grid.
The energy generated thanks to natural resources returns to the territory assuming another form and other meanings. The principles of the circular economy that regulate the company’s production are also activated in the neighbouring realities. In the heart of the Marche countryside, in the San Clemente Valley, the Municipality of Apiro and the Loccioni company have launched a public-private project to enhance the historical, cultural, artistic and agricultural heritage of the valley and to create new job opportunities. The valley has now become a laboratory of agriculture of the future where the research and methodologies developed in the field of mechatronics are converted into projects for agriculture 4.0 such as digitally monitored beehives, prototypes for measuring erosion of agricultural land or intelligent irrigation systems for olive groves.
The Tuscan hills covered with San Giovese vineyards that close the photographic series are the landscape that surrounds the “Salcheto” winery in Montepulciano (SI), award-winning noble wine cellar, off-grid since 2011. The idea of creating an energetically autonomous cellar begins with energy saving, and then searches for sources of energy production within the farm: solutions range from solar skylights to curved mirrors to illuminate all work spaces and give up artificial lighting , vertical gardens, adiabatic irrigation of the roof-square and natural night ventilation to air-condition the cellar in the summer, winemaking that exploit the energy produced by the fermentation itself to move the must and marc, energy production from all the pruning waste and from the exchange low enthalpy geothermal under the vineyards. In 2010, the Tuscan company was the first in Europe to have certified the Carbon Footprint of a bottle of wine (according to the ISO 14064 standard), accounting for all greenhouse gas emissions due to the production, bottling and marketing of a bottle of wine.
