Rome will have its waste-to-energy plant within the established deadline. The commitment made by Mayor Roberto Gualtieri was reiterated yesterday, on the occasion of the event “Roma Locomotiva d’Italia – Capitale Pulita”, held at Palazzo Wedekind. In addition to the mayor, participants were the president of Acea, Fabrizio Palermo, the vice-minister of Transport, Galeazzo Bignami, the vice-minister of the Environment Vannia Gava, the director of pulmonology at the Gemelli Polyclinic Luca Richeldi, the vice-president of the Hitachi company Fabio Dinale were present. The president of Syctom (which manages factories in France), Corentin Duprey, and the manager who manages the waste-to-energy plant in Vienna, Alexander Kirchner, were present via video conference.
«It will be an efficient and environmentally beneficial plant that will process 600 thousand tons of waste per year. According to the waste hierarchy at European level, we should prefer these plants that close the cycle and are preferable to landfilling because they are modern and technologically advanced”, said Gualtieri to motivate the Municipality’s choice to continue the construction of the plant without hesitation. The mayor explained the importance of selective waste collection: «We must not abandon it, on the contrary, we must reinforce it to also accelerate the issue of reuse. There are two solutions: it can be deposited in landfills or in waste-to-energy plants. We chose the second and the closer the waste-to-energy plant is, the better. The objective is ambitious, there will be a minimum residue. The waste energy recovery plant must be created for the undifferentiated portion, which, obviously, must be reduced to the minimum possible. Times are very tight, but that’s it.” There was no lack of reference to respect for legality. «We must remember that an uncontrolled cycle of waste falls into the hands of criminals who adopt illegal disposal, burning it, leading to the emission of dioxins harmful to health. Regulating the cycle means choosing the solution that most respects health and the environment. The energy-from-waste production plant that we are evaluating is the most advanced in Europe and this is a value for us. capacity of 600 thousand tons results from a calculation of what will be the portion of unsorted waste that will remain, in a large city with a very high presence of tourists, after having taken waste sorting to the highest possible level in the coming years. ” About the completion deadlines, Gualtieri said: «We imagined the end of the works at the end of 2026. Then there are the tests, the trials but these are still very tight times for a project like this. There is a maximum timetable for the project in competition, but then proposals can also propose tighter deadlines”, concluded Gualtieri.
Acea, which presented a project in this regard, also sided with the mayor of Rome. The waste energy recovery plant “for us is a significant project, already put out to tender by the Municipality. We are there, other companies were unable to present a suitable project within the expected timeframe”, said CEO Fabrizio Palermo. He added: «We are also prepared thanks to the experience we have in Lazio, where we already manage the San Vittore waste-to-energy plant, for which we are now working on the fourth line. For Rome we created a project that does not impact the landscape and we are very proud of it.” Regarding the calendar, Palermo specified that «there are milestones that were also identified in the competition notice and these are the indications of the times» now «we are focused on presenting a proposal consistent with what was put out to tender”. According to the CEO, this is “a very important operation that involves not only us, but what we believe to be the best technological know-how and experience in this area. The solution The proposal, presented by Gualtieri, represents vanguard. A concrete solution – he added – that has been tendered, and we are confident and working to present an offer. We believe it can be a valid contribution to solving and managing the waste issue in the capital.” Finally, Palermo recalled that “the technology from Hitachi”, a company that participates in the consortium of which Acea is the leader, “is the best in the world for building waste energy recovery plants”. And Hitachi’s number two, Fabio Dinale, went into the technological details: «After a year of collaboration with Acea, we are working to create Europe’s most innovative plant in Rome, which will come into operation in 2027. In addition to energy, it will produce approximately 60-80 kilos of enough gold to make 4,000 wedding rings a year and will be able to recover from waste 10,000 tons of steel useful for the construction of one hundred locomotives, 2,000 tons of aluminum equivalent to that needed for ten A340 airbuses and 1,600 tons of copper enough to create 130 kilometers of overhead facilities for trains and trams. Our waste-to-energy plants allow us to do without landfills, despite some high additional costs.”
Regarding fears about the proximity of the energy waste transformation plant to homes, some citizens expressed some doubts but the deputy minister of the Environment Gava reassured the Romans: «We need an environmental culture to explain to people how these plants are made and say them that they are not dangerous thanks to solid information. We have to educate citizens that waste-to-energy plants are not dangerous, just think that in northern Europe there are houses close to these plants.” Pulmonologist Luca Richeldi spoke about the consequences for health and, following the mayor’s line, he stated that “a waste cycle that is not regulated is a risk to health, because if it is based on landfills or inefficient selective collection it causes serious problems for those with comorbidities. At the moment, data coming from all over the world lead to only one solution, which is the production of energy from waste. We cannot wait another 50 years because then it will be too late. On the other hand, individual and public health is constitutionally guaranteed, so the fact that Having debates that allow us to delve deeper into the topic is useful for everyone’s knowledge.”
A demonstration of support came from the executive, represented on stage by the deputy minister of Infrastructure and Transport, Galeazzo Bignami (Gava was via videoconference). «The government is in favor of the interventions that must be carried out to achieve the objectives established by 2030 with regard to waste management and respect for the environment». Another virtuous example comes from Vienna, thanks to the testimony of Alexander Kirchner, one of the managers of the Spittelau plant: «When the first waste-to-energy plant was built in the 1960s, there were many complaints, today everyone is enthusiastic. To do sustainable work, we start with recycling first, we need to recycle as much as possible to obtain high-quality materials and only then does the transformation of waste into energy occur.”
Source: IL Tempo
Emma Fitzgerald is an accomplished political journalist and author at The Nation View. With a background in political science and international relations, she has a deep understanding of the political landscape and the forces that shape it.
