Riding in the fast lane to carbon leadership

Over four million travellers a day use the Autostrade per l’Italia (ASPI) network. With its concessionaire subsidiaries and a network under concession of over 3,400km, ASPI is the leading European Concessionaire for toll motorway management and for related transport services. The Group also operates overseas in South America, Poland and the United States, totalling 800km of motorway network. Companies like ASPI, operating outside the Emission Trading System, quite often encounter many types of obstacles in their quest of a high carbon management profile: quick-win solutions with significant impact are usually not available. In many cases they end up building pilot-scale, isolated showcase plants and installations, as a means to testify their environmental consciousness, without, however, dealing with significant volumes, in terms of greenhouse gas reduction.

A couple of years ago, ASPI resolved to dedicate resources and capital to carbon management and launched a dedicated programme stemming from the following headlines:
• Following EU guidelines, CO2 reduction must pursue via energy and emissions savings, as well as through renewable energy generation.
• Whichever the initiative, whether based on proprietary know-how or on commonly available technologies, it must be fit for broad deployment: prototypical, pilot-scale solutions are of no interest if not suitable for a quick scale-up.
• Every solution has to be conceived, designed and realised internally and on the Company assets.  
• 360 degree approach: all areas of ASPI activities are to be explored for opportunities and significant numbers generated via multiple projects and initiatives.
ASPI has therefore launched a number of parallel and concurrent initiatives to control its direct emissions, spanning from aggressive energy saving plans (replacement of traditional lighting with LED-based new devices, upgrade of vehicle fleet, low∞consumption pavement maintenance techniques, low-carbon strategies for building management etc.) to an extensive renewable energy generation programme based on photovoltaic technology. Big figures have also been obtained as far as indirect emissions are concerned (those connected to the motorway users) through proprietary know-how and technologies, such as the Telepass and the Safety Tutor.

Along the lines of energy saving, one of the most  important project involves the gradual replacement of traditional high∞pressure sodium lighting  with more efficient permanent LED lighting in tunnels. This action results in considerable energy savings with a reduction of CO2  emissions of about 40 percent and the significant containment of maintenance costs, retaining the required safety standards. In 2009, 6,378 lighting fixtures were replaced. For 2010 the installation programme counts a further 10,766 LED units, reaching approximately 50 percent of the total, with annual energetic savings of around 4 GWh, bringing an estimated environmental benefit in terms of savings of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere of around 2,120 tonnes.

Still on the theme of reducing energy consumption and efficiency improvement Autostrade per l’Italia carried out actions on multiple fronts:
• Vehicle fleet, providing for a careful  management through the in-house implementation of a satellite system to track the position of vehicles (to help reduce intervention times and kilometers travelled) in addition to the replacement of old vehicles with cleaner and higher efficiency models.  The fleet’s average CO2 emissions went from 131g/km (2008) to 129g/km(2009) per vehicle. Kilometres travelled also dropped by 2.8 percent on 2008. Such measures produced a further reduction of 214 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
• Motorway pavement maintenance, using cold in-place recycling procedures and techniques, which  offer the greatest savings in economic and environmental terms, limiting the use of virgin raw materials and curbing costs, fuel consumption and emissions linked to transport and disposal. Total CO2 saved due to road pavement recycling in 2009 was roughly 8,000 tonnes.
• The “Green Building” project, initially targeted at making Rome headquarters energetically self∞sufficient and planned to be deployed on other premises. The project started with  passive systems in buildings such as variable flow sensors for lighting and presence in the common areas, the application of sunlight screening films and the centralised temperature control of all spaces. This is, however, a preparatory phase for the second stage of the project involving the implementation  of a system for the combined production of electricity, heat and cooling (tri- generation). Fuelled by vegetable oil, the module is equipped with a high-efficiency heat recovery system from hot exhausts, engine oil and coolant fluids, thus generating heating/cooling streams, while producing electricity for on-site consumption. Through the combination of all these actions, the building, also equipped with a 500kWp PV generator, requires significantly less energy compared to the original 4.5 GWh/year and becomes almost carbon-neutral.

From the viewpoint of renewable energy, ASPI is currently engaged in an extended programme for the construction of 100+ photovoltaic generation sites. A first phase of the initiative encompasses the installation at 87 service areas of a PV system based on a European Patent obtained by ASPI integrated into sun-shading shelters provided for the users’ convenience: this phase will be completed in 2010 and account for approximately 4MWp of installed solar power.

Phase 2 has also been launched with the design and construction of several other PV sites, each of them ranging from 200kWp  to 1MWp and consisting of a mix of stand-alone and integrated modules, also including two ground-based power centers. Phase 2 has a target of adding 3MWp to phase 1, thus leading to a total of 7MWp planned for 1stQ 2011 and an overall CO2 reduction in excess of 5,000 tonnes per year. As mentioned already, great environmental benefits have been achieved as regards indirect emissions. Traffic congestion produces wasted fuel, increasing trip times by slower speeds, vehicular queuing and “stop and go” events during which emissions increase. Investments in improvements of service levels and safety standards  (such as  motorway expansion projects through the construction of additional lanes, better work site programming and faster removal of accident vehicles, improved winter operations, adoption of accident prevention measures – the Safety Tutor System ≥ adapting infrastructure capacity to meet changing traffic volumes ≥ “dynamic third” lanes ≥ and better information on traffic conditions), have helped over the years to significantly reduce the annual value for traffic  fluidity or Total Delay Index (defined as the total number of hours of vehicles using the motorway at lower speeds than the reference one) decreasing by 36 percent in the three-year period 2007-2009, and thereby significantly reduction of CO2 emissions and other atmospheric pollutants generated by motorway traffic.

Using  two calculation models,  the real advantage in terms of CO2 savings deriving from the introduction and subsequent development of the Telepass (electronic toll collection system ) and Tutor (average speed measuring system installed on 32 percent of ASPI motorway network) systems has been also estimated. In 2009 26,732 tonnes and 56,300 tonnes of  CO2 were saved thanks to Telepass and Safety Tutor respectively. Finally, it is worth mentioning the importance in terms of environmental impact of initiatives directly  involving motorway network users. Autostrade per l’Italia has launched its first project of carpooling applied to highways. Carpooling is a sustainable and more environmentally friendly way to travel. It not only reduces the costs involved in car travel by sharing journey expenses (such as fuel and tolls) between the people travelling, but  reduces carbon emissions, traffic  on the roads, and the need for parking spaces. The initiative, involving in this first phase customers who travel the A8 and A9 highways daily from Como and Varese to Milan and back, both helps to reduce levels of pollution and to improve traffic flow on a particularly busy road affected by extension works. The carpooling project includes a discount for cars carrying at least four people, a dedicated track toll and a web platform to facilitate the matching of supply and demand that has become in just three months the first carpooling platform in Italy.