Veneto could become the national pole of hydrogen technologies. In Bassano del Grappa, in the province of Vicenza, Baxi Spa is already capable of producing a boiler running 100% using hydrogen.
The Baxi Spa in Bassano del Grappa
Worldwide, only Baxi has managed to certify this potentially revolutionary technology for domestic and industrial heating. Not that Baxi is a new entry in the world of boilers, given that it produces about 3.000 a day and since 1978 it has produced something like 11 million in the plant, the Bassano one, the largest in Europe.
The first pilot installation of a premixed hydrogen boiler for domestic use took place in 2019 in Rozeburg in the Netherlands. Now Baxi, on behalf of the BDR Thermea group, is ready for a large-scale production of hydrogen boilers, with the aim of heating water without carbon dioxide emissions.
In progress there will be a first phase in which Baxi will produce high-efficiency boilers certified to work with a mixture of methane and 20% hydrogen, waiting to arrive by 2025 to widespread deployment of boilers fueled entirely by hydrogen.
«Our research center in Bassano has patented the technological part from "a to z". The goal is to become the world's leading manufacturer of hydrogen boilers», observes the engineer Alberto Favero, CEO of Baxi.
At European level, the Germans are in pursuit to produce an equally innovative one also in a Teutonic version, and the game of industrial competition is also played out in the political and bureaucratic part that is needed to accompany this transition.
«In the world, research continues rapidly in experimentation to produce green hydrogen, deriving from completely renewable sources, for example from photovoltaics. In recent weeks we are preparing important agreements with the main national utilities, it is essential to speed up the times because the infrastructures of our country must be updated as quickly as possible", explains the CEO.
Production to start in July
From the beginning of July it will begin in Bassano del Grappa the first production of 500 hydrogen boilers to be allocated to the Dutch and English markets, countries where pilot projects have already been underway for some time to reorganize domestic heating.
«A new world will open up – continues engineer Favero – and there is a need to update all the safety regulations, the strategies with the distribution companies, it will also be necessary to clarify the incentives on the subject of energy. No one believes that the use of gas can be completely replaced, but hydrogen has quickly become one of the most interesting alternatives».
It must be said that even now, however, national energy infrastructures would allow for use blending mode, i.e. 80% gas and 20% hydrogen.
The Veneto National Hydrogen Pole
It's not just the private sector that is making giant strides in the green transition, because in the meantime, Veneto too, with a view to a medium-long term energy policy, is laying the foundations to become the new Italian “Hydrogen Valley”., starting from the strategic center of Marghera.
The European Hydrogen Strategy plans to reach technological maturity for the large-scale use of hydrogen by 2050, estimating that by that date 25% of energy consumption will be represented bygreen hydrogen.
One of the objectives of the "Venice World Capital of Sustainability" Foundation is precisely the creation of a hydrogen pole in Porto Marghera, an area that hosts infrastructures such as navigable canals and basins, a commercial port, road and railway infrastructures and numerous incubators of research.
Still on the front of energy independence, they are spreading very rapidly in the Veneto region the renewable energy communities and Groups of Collective Consumers, new energy production and consumption configurations that could concretely contribute to reducing bill costs. It is also estimated that the resources of the PNRR would be able to support the birth of about 670 energy communities in the Municipalities of the region with less than 5.000 inhabitants.
«It is useful in this phase greater political decision-making. Abroad they are faster and are cutting red tape as much as possible. Giants like Snam and Italgas speak of hydrogen in an increasingly decisive manner, we must not be caught unprepared from a regulatory and infrastructural point of view», concludes the CEO of Baxi.
