New biomass district heating plant inaugurated in Faenza, Italy, allowing access to tax credit for industrial networks.

Heat from vine-growing waste, electricity that comes from biomass. This is what is happening at the plant of Enomondo, a company established 50 percent by Hera Ambiente and 50 percent by Caviro Extra, which operates an innovative biomass combustion and compost production plant in the Faenza industrial zone. The project was made possible through a partnership with White Energy Group an energy services company (Esco) based in Verona and Cagliari, which Enomondo relied on to embark on a path toward environmental sustainability.

The district heating plant, a cogeneration plant that simultaneously produces electricity and thermal energy, was inaugurated in recent weeks. The energy produced is used in the production process of companies in the Caviro Group, Italy’s largest wine-growing cooperative that also operates in the recovery of by-products derived from the agri-food chain in general, and in other civil and industrial utilities for space heating and cooling, processing, and domestic hot water supply.

The network, which distributes one hundred thousand thermal Mwh per year, was implemented through the Blue Easy Bio service offered by White Energy Group, a service that allows access to tax credit for an industrial network, in this case of Manager-User.

Through waste from the wine supply chain, including pomace (from the production of wine from the Caviro Group’s production chain), and public green waste and prunings collected at the Faenza-based Caviro Extra plant, the power plant produces high-pressure, high-temperature steam, which through a turbine is transformed into electricity.

The utilities are equipped with the latest generation of meters, and readings are available in a web portal created and implemented by White Energy Group (VEP Virtual Energy Platform) that allows users to keep consumption under control. Several users are already connected: these are industrial premises, artisan activities, civilian domestic users, and in particular the Formula 1 racing team Alpha Tauri, which is based next to Caviro Extra and Enomondo.

The inauguration was attended by Sergio Celotti, managing director of Enomondo along with Giovanni Tellini, sales manager of Whitenergy; Fabio Baldazzi, general manager of the Caviro plant; Massimo Isola, mayor of Faenza; Stefano Bonaccini, president of the Emilia Romagna region; Filippo Brandolini, president of Hera Ambiente; and Carlo Dalmonte, president of Caviro Extra.

“In addition to electricity, we also produce thermal energy,” Sergio Celotti, Enomondo’s CEO, explained during the inauguration. The great advantage of the district heating network is that energy is produced in a single thermal power plant using mostly renewable fuels, so there are both environmental and economic benefits compared to the use of fossil methane. The new plant allows us to allocate steam both to the operation of plants inside the Caviro Extra plant and outward to adjacent homes and businesses.”

“The project started in February 2017 with an initial inspection on the Faenza plant,” explains Giovanni Tellini, Whitenergy ‘s Sales Manager , “ through which we were able to verify the necessary conditions to be able to start this project in collaboration with Enomondo. The intervention is not unique in the national panorama: “Whitenergy, in fact, in recent years has obtained for many of its customers access to the Blue Certificates® (the name of the Whitenergy service related to this category of tax credit), favoring the implementation of small and medium-sized industrial district heating networks fueled by biomass, distributed throughout the territory, “concludes Tellini. Important future prospects. Energy produced from renewable sources may one day be transported to public buildings that have high consumption, such as the municipal swimming pool or the hospital, in which case the benefits would be obvious in every respect.