In Basilicata a 500,000 euro pilot plant set up to produce energy and biomethane from biomass

In Basilicata, precisely in the protected area of ‘Dolomiti Lucane’, the setting-up of a demonstration plant is being completed to produce energy and biomethane to be used for the Park’s services. The Basilicata Region has completely funded this project: with an amount of 500,000 euro gasification facility has already been set up and a methanation plant, designed and realized by ENEA, is under completion.

The project is aimed at exploiting wood waste using innovative and eco-friendly technologies to produce energy; SERI is co-partner of the project alongside ENEA. Actually it is an ENEA spin-off company concerned with the design, realization and marketing of custom “turnkey” plants to produce energy from biomass and waste treatment to the service of micro- and distributed generation.

"This project is intended to be an example of ‘best practice’ to start up a Lucanian production chain for bioenergy – says Giacobbe Braccio, Head of the Technical Unit for Technologies Development of the ENEA Trisaia Research Centre. Thanks to the incentivisation policy introduced with the ministerial decree of 6th July, 2012, the production of electric power and gasification heat is cost-effective and can be integrated within the Italian national production system, particularly  for small-size plants. The same kind of interest is raised for biomethane production, which is very promising despite its complexity, especially when raw material is woody biomass".

In the last few years, the plants producing electric power and heat from woody biomass combustion or gasification are ever expanding in many regions; they are mainly medium- or small-size plants using biomass from the surrounding areas as raw material – e.g., material from pruning the vines or olive tree groves, or from wood maintenance and/or riverbed cleaning, etc.

Yet, says Vito Pignatelli, Biomass and Bioenergy Technologies Coordinator of the ENEA Technical Unit for Renewable Energy Sources, and Chairman of ITABIA, "in order to guide the current growth and to prevent possible distortions from negatively impact a sector so crucial and with so high a potential for safeguarding the territory and decarbonizing the economy, a clear-cut and common strategy, consistently with the guidelines of the Bioenergy Plan is required ". Such Plan – written by a working group purposely created by the Italian Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Forestry (MiPAAF), and approved last August by the State-Regions Conference – outlines a general strategy and identifies intervention priorities and operative instruments for promoting and disseminating bioenergy technologies. "This is a first, important step ahead for a balanced development in this sector, in that at last it is considered as an opportunity for agriculture and for our nation, and not only as a fatal occupation of rural areas inevitably doomed to food production”, concludes Mr. Pignatelli.

For further information:

Giacobbe Braccio, ENEA Trisaia Research Centre, giacobbe.braccio@enea.it

Vito Pignatelli, ENEA Casaccia Research Centre, vito.pignatelli@enea.it