To achieve the goals set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement on greenhouse gas emissions, the contribution of renewable sources is not sufficient. As a recent report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation explains, green energy can - at most - contribute to 55% of the reduction of pollutants by 2050, but no further. It is necessary to find alternative solutions, able to lend their support to the fight against climate change. Among the available options is one that involves something that our society produces and possesses in abundance and has to constantly deal with: waste.
The adoption of treatment methods which, rather than landfill disposal, prefer recycling carried out with technologically advanced systems give excellent results in terms of less pollution of the planet. According to the European Union, if this path were followed, Italy alone would avoid introducing something like 111 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. A "lesson" that we have learned as private citizens with the obligation of separate waste collection at the domestic level. However, the reuse of materials through recycling (from glass you will get more glass or from aluminum more aluminum and so on) is not the only choice available for obtaining environmental benefits from what is no longer needed.
There is another with great potential: transforming what is discarded into a new, less polluting energy source to be used in place of fossil fuels (coal, oil or gas). If only this cleaner "fuel" were used to power production and above all industrial activities, today responsible for a share equal to 21% of global emissions, we would save tons of CO2 and many millions of euros. As is often the case, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that we are not faced with a "laboratory" scenario, with tests and experiments still in progress; in fact, the "fuel" from waste treatment already exists, is ready for use and is called CSS, an acronym for Secondary Solid Fuel.
Like the better known digestion of organic waste and sludge (aerobic and/or anaerobic), CSS is another system for recovering thermal and electrical energy; this fuel with low carbon content is composed of the dry fraction and the bio-dried product deriving from the mechanical-biological treatment of urban waste or from the combustion of variously combined dry/wet fractions. Let's get to the bad: to date, CSS is little used, poorly understood and often opposed. The main sector of use is that of the cement industry. The data leave no doubt: if the sector used CSS instead of fossil fuels, there would be 700 million euros in savings and 10 million tons of CO2 avoided every year.
Still, there are a number of factors holding back the full adoption of this solution. Let's see some of them.
- A non-negligible element calls into question the regulatory framework which is both unclear and complicated. In this sense, for example, the fact that two types of CSS are recognized weighs heavily: one which is defined as waste (governed by article 183, paragraph 1, letter of the civil code) of Legislative Decree 152/06) and another which, on the other hand, it is considered non-waste (ie the CSS Combustible regulated by article 184 ter of Legislative Decree 152/06 better known as TUA). Although both perform the same function of fuel, therefore of energy recovery from waste fractions, the first remains a special waste to all intents and purposes, while the second has lost this qualification deserving the status of real fuel/product . A lexical ambiguity that contributes to creating confusion on how to use it, beyond the laws and regulations that regulate CSS and its production (such as Ministerial Decree n.22/2013).
- Another braking factor is the procedure that leads to obtaining CSS that can be used as fuel and which concerns the necessary treatments on waste leaving MBT, the process which allows the recovery of materials from unsorted waste. In fact, only 13,8% of municipal waste leaving the MBT plants (equal to 1,3 million tonnes) is sent to further treatments such as refining for the production of RDF or biostabilisation (2017 data). Furthermore, only a fraction of the MBT plants in operation have the appropriate authorizations and technology to produce RDF (both as waste and as a product). This means that, in 2017, of the 130 operating plants surveyed throughout the country, just 30% generically produced SSF.
- There is also a burden of complex, lengthy and expensive bureaucratic-authorisation procedures which make even potential users give up. One of these concerns the procedure for renewal and revision of the Integrated Environmental Authorization (AIA) and the - additional - for obtaining the 3rd Environmental Impact Assessment (VIA). The latter is a particularly difficult requirement to achieve, which is reason enough for many cement plant managers to back off their plans to use CSS.
- Another obstacle to a real diffusion of the CSS is represented by the mismatch between supply and demand. Those who produce CSS have a constant incoming flow and the need to find a place quickly. All this collides with the fluctuations of the economic cycle to which the demand side (cement factories) is exposed. Added to this is the international situation. Overall, therefore, the economic margins for producing fuel CSS are very small.
- Finally, there is no lack of opposition from public opinion which, often confused by excessively complicated legislation, has said it is against the use of CSS, considering it harmful to health. An opposition that in some cases has even convinced public bodies that, exploited or fearful of losing consensus, have bowed to the positions of the "NO" committees. This brief overview leaves the bitterness that one feels in front of a project that has all the characteristics to work and which, however, for totally external reasons fails to take off. The DM n.22/2013 which regulated its use, more than five years after its entry into force, has become an example of how much difficulty the circular economy makes to find space in a country system plastered by logic and models based on the linear economy, with many prejudices and erroneous beliefs regarding waste and energy.
The CSS, especially in its end of waste (EoW) variant of high quality fuel, should have given concrete answers both in terms of closing the integrated waste cycle and replacing fossil fuels with other alternatives. Not only. It could have helped reduce energy dependency of our country from abroad, producing energy at reduced costs and with a low carbon content to be used to replace fossil sources. . The current non-results must not lead to the abandonment of this solution, but rather to its relaunch on a different basis.
