Last April 11th the Tuscany region gave the green light for the renewal of the integrated environmental authorization for the Livorno waste-to-energy plant. Located about 2 kilometers from the port and Eni refinery of Stagno, the incinerator which has been present for several decades is currently shut down due to a fault and, if it is restarted, it should end its life at the end of 2027.
The nearby refinery should instead be converted into the third Italian biorefinery, after Porto Marghera and Gela, as confirmed at the beginning of the year by Eni after announcing it in 2022. It involves the construction of three new plants for the production of biofuels: a feed pre-treatment unit biogenic plants, a 500 thousand tonnes per year Ecofining plant and a plant for the production of hydrogen from methane gas. As stated on the Eni website, the plants “will be able to treat different types of biogenic feedstock, mainly waste and residues of vegetal origin, to produce HVO diesel, HVO naphtha and bio-LPG” with completion and start-up by 2026.
In an observation sent to the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security dated 4 May 2023, political movements and citizen committees labeled the very idea of focusing on biofuels as a “wrong choice” given that “the new EU regulation prohibits the sale of biofuels from 2035 new cars and vans with petrol engines in favor of electric and hydrogen cars”, together with doubts about the flood risk – in 2017 the flooding of two streams caused 8 deaths and the refinery was also affected – “Considering that it will be built inside of an area While awaiting reclamation, the hydro-geo-morphological criticalities appear to be more than a wake-up call to be taken into account to avoid making an already very fragile area from an environmental and environmental point of view even more impactful. morphological, as also demonstrated by the ‘Flood Management Plan’ in which the area of the Eni refinery in Livorno is classified in a high risk class”. Last but not least, there are doubts about reducing environmental impact.
The editorial team recommends:
The Darsena Europa project expands the port of Livorno
“It is not possible to talk about reducing environmental impact – underlines Maurizio Marchi of Medicina Democratica Livorno – it is a question of getting 200 thousand tons of waste per year to the current refinery by ship and truck. It wouldn’t diminish the current impact one iota. In fact, it would make it worse. That’s the problem in a nutshell. In addition there would be the processing of the refinery itself and the reduction of waste to fuels which would also have emissions”.
