Zero emissions

All human activities, from transport to manufacturing, from heating to energy generation and consumption, have an inevitable impact on the environment.
This is an impact which cannot be completely eliminated (even "clean" and renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power are not devoid of environmental impact), but it can be contained and mitigated by adopting the right technologies.

An important challenge is given by the reduction of gas emissions into the atmosphere that produce a “greenhouse effect”. Increased emissions, owing to progress and the consequent growing use of fossil fuels is altering the composition of the atmosphere and creating serious climate alterations.
Although the real intensity of climate change has not yet been scientifically ascertained, the international community has decided to adopt a series of measures aimed at combating it. Different courses can be proposed to this end, but there is only one objective: reduce green house gases, particularly carbon dioxide (CO2) which make up the main part.

Enel wants to be a leader in research and innovation in the struggle against climate changing emissions while expressing its commitment to a better world.

Since 2000 Enel voluntarily undertook to reduce specific carbon dioxide emissions by 20% from the 1990 level by 2006. The objective was already reached in 2005, thanks to four billion euros' worth of investments which improved the environmental performance of their power stations. Enel's commitment to reducing CO2 emissions won it the important recognition of the International Renewable Energy Award in 2002 as the most committed electricity company on this front on the global level.

But Enel's objectives are far more ambitious. Enel wants to reach ever better environmental and efficiency standards, so in the next five years it will be developing a large 800 million euro innovative project investment programme in Italy, reducing the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere by at least one million tonnes a year.
This is a realistic, rigorous and detailed plan which constitutes a fundamental step towards the next objective, the first power stations without carbon dioxide emissions by 2020.

Enel is an active player in this field: among other things it participated in drafting the European programme "Zero Emission Platform" and on the scientific front developed important relationships with Italian and foreign leading universities and research agencies: For example ENEA, CNR, INGV, MIT in Boston, IFRF (the latter is the most important organisation in the world for clean combustion with 150 members including ExxonMobil Research, E.On, Eléctricité de France etc., has recently set up its operational basis in Enel's Livorno Experimental Area).
On the institutional level it is working with the Ministries for Economic Development, the Environment and Research and is participating in the 6th European Outline Programme.
On the industrial level Enel is a member of EPRI, the consortium of major world utilities for the development of gasification and works with Fiat, Iveco, Ansaldo, Sapio, Sol, RWE and Vattenfall. It is also very attentively following FutureGen, the project for the "zero emissions" carbon power station for which the American government is investing one billion dollars.

A crucial point of this vision is also the hydrogen research and experimentation programme.
It has a twofold objective: acquire know-how on producing and using hydrogen in power generation plants, and to test solutions for high efficiency distributed generation.

It is our vision of the "chimneyless" power station. Hydrogen is extracted from fossil fuels by using gasification processes included in innovative thermal power stations equipped with systems for CO2 separation. This is then definitively held in natural geological reservoirs while the hydrogen is used to generate electrical energy. Production is completely clean because practically all that is emitted into the environment from the hydrogen combustion is water vapour.

The "chimneyless" power station would have been science fiction until a short time ago. Today it is a realistic vision. Research into innovative combustion systems still require effort on methods to capture and hold CO2, and on other avant-garde experiments. These are all things that Enel is doing with commitment and awareness, towards an appointment which is by now established.

 

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