CHANCES FOR BIOMASS TO ENERGY IN THE ITALIAN CONTEST

Nowadays energy conservation, improvement of energy efficiency and integration of renewable sources are not only rational principles for global sustainability but refer also to well known and precise goals and targets defined in national and international programs. In this framework i.e. European target for year 2020 have been defined and detailed for each member country. These aims define also the percentage of renewable energy that has to be reached in each final uses in Italy. To that end biomass represent a promising source for many reasons: availability, different typologies, programmability and storage, technological maturity, new researches in the field of small cogeneration, biomethane distribution and second generation biofuels production. This work includes an up to date survey about Italian biomass technical potential, describes the state of the art of the existing biomass plants and investigates the existing technical (i.e. problem related to the source or to the applied technologies) and not technical (i.e. changes of rules and regulations; difficulties relating financing; variations of supporting measures etc.) barriers and the possible ways to overcome them. As result, the need of defining guide lines and actions towards innovative and disruptive energy scenarios able to ensure comfort for people with a minimum energy consumption is coupled with the possibility of using local renewable energy sources improving also the natural, economic and industrial contest. To that end, the national availability of biomass has been deeply analysed towards the indication of the most effective and sustainable uses of this kind of source in the next future and toward a zero carbon society.