The power of garbage with an innovative multi-utility

Not everyone, perhaps, is aware of the amount of energy that is ‘thrown away’ with the assumption that it cannot be recovered somehow or other. In today’s world, however, recovering thrown-away energy has become a must, not only because it has become abundantly clear that producing new energy has a negative impact on the environment and the economy, but above all because ‘wasted’ energy is also harmful to the environment and costly in terms of disposal expenses.

It’s particularly worth noting how much potential energy there is in waste – not that the amount of fuel extractable from a banana peel could ever propel Dr Emmett Lathrop Brown’s car “back to the future”, but it is greater than one might imagine: the average bag of garbage has enough potential energy to keep a light bulb turned on for about eight hours.

Energy from waste can be recovered via thermal treatment in waste-to-energy (WTE) plants, in which, at a temperature of roughly 1,000°C, unsorted material is subjected to a process of combustion, without adding any other fuel, from which electricity is produced.

Hera Spa
In spite of these new technologies and processes, a considerable amount of energy is still thrown away. If harnessed in utility service management, this waste energy could make a huge difference. This kind of awareness is typical of the context in which Hera Spa, an industrial group located in central-northeastern Italy, operates. Providing energy, water and environmental services, it represents one of the most important organisations in the multi-utility sector across the country.

Since it was founded in 2002, the group has designed its own industrial plans around increased sustainability in the energy sector, in order to contribute to environmental protection and serve the interests of present and future generations.

Hera was born out of an initial network of no less than 11 small to medium local public utilities. On account of their sizes, these utilities were not particularly efficient, and were less able to promote investments that would guarantee improvements in systemic energy efficiency. The new company that was created was immediately the perfect size to produce synergistic efficiency and implement policies of actual recycling and energy reconversion – so much so that the latter soon became one of the fundamental objectives of the company’s business plans.

With a significant investment plan created in order to redesign methods of providing and managing these services, the group has created the most important network of last-generation waste-to-energy plants in the country (12 plants), whose annual capacity of waste treatment now reaches over 1.5 million tonnes (equivalent to about 50 football fields covered by three metres of waste, which is over 20 percent of Italian WTE plants’ total capacity).

Since these plants were constructed, allowing the group to develop an expertise that is highly regarded in many parts of the world, over one terawatt hour of electricity has been extracted each year (which corresponds to the average annual consumption of a small city with over 200,000 families).

Today, almost 90 percent of waste produced by families is recovered: 55 percent of the waste not treated in WTE plants is separated and recycled, avoiding dispersal in landfills and all the ensuing collateral effects with a high environmental impact. The organic part of the waste is sent to biodigesters to extract its content of biogas and methane that, in the near future, will be directly channelled into methane gas distribution networks (which are also managed by Hera) and used for residential heating. With the residues of biodigestion it is possible to produce fertilisers, thus avoiding the dispersal of these substances in landfills and reducing the damage done to the environment by the greenhouse gases released during the final process of degradation. The overall layout of the waste cycle created by Hera thus represents not only a peak of excellence nationwide, but is also recognised as being fully in line with European best practices.

Increasing intelligence
Waste management by this Italian group offers an example of how efficiency in energy and raw material recovery necessarily involves investments and innovation. It is in fact only thanks to strong technological and innovative content that structures, plants and networks, while being inert in themselves, can take on an ‘intelligence’ of their own, becoming ever ‘smarter’ and ‘easier’, as well as more ‘interactive’ and respectful of the environment.

Hera is currently experimenting with ‘intelligent’ garbage bins, that is bins that are able to measure and memorise the waste disposal of each family and request emptying when their maximum capacity has been reached. This will improve efficiency in the consumption and emissions of the vehicles used to gather and transport garbage.

Hera has also modernised electricity- and gas-distribution networks by introducing smart meters that provide remote, real-time readings of each customer’s consumption, with lower management costs for the company and a higher level of service quality. But our pursuit of innovation does not end there. The networks, which were already ‘smart’, have now evolved and become ‘intelligent’ thanks to the creation of a remote control centre capable of rapidly managing, with sophisticated IT systems, any kind of operational need or emergency. Moreover it is capable of complete data processing in order to provide advice on network management. This is done in order to prevent breakdowns, limit leakage and not waste resources.

Reductions in harmful emissions caused by residential heating systems is a further area in which Hera has proved to be particularly innovative. Thanks to a remote heating project designed for environmentally sustainable buildings in the city of Modena, which has been developed since 2009, it was possible to take advantage of both the heat generated by a few of its WTE and power-production plants, and a natural reserve of hot underground water. This system represents an alternative source of heating with a low environmental impact, both in terms of energy savings and protection of the ecosystem, thanks to reduced CO2 emissions.

Analysing electricity and heating consumption is anything but simple, and requires both the intervention of expert professionals and investments that may have a significant influence on a family’s budget. Therefore, many families prefer not to proceed in this direction, and thus continue not to know how much energy they could actually save. This is why Hera has decided to offer innovative services in energy efficiency improvement to its customers. For its business customers, true miniature electricity and heating co-generators have been developed, in addition to a series of initiatives to which the Italian Research Centre for Economy and Management of Energy Efficiency awarded a national prize in 2015. To facilitate the analysis of private customers’ energy consumption and requirements, the group has invented the virtual bill, providing applications that measure daily consumption in real time and give direct feedback on the ways in which it can be reduced.

Moreover, a new generation of thermostats is currently in the testing phase; these intelligent devices provide suggestions on how to save resources, which is achieved by analysing household heating systems’ energy performance and monitoring their usage.

These are only a few of the projects that, over the last seven years, have enabled the group to achieve systemic energy savings amounting to 300,000 tonnes of oil equivalent. In order to fully grasp the significance of this figure, one must only imagine a line of standard oil drums that stretches over roughly 1,400km.

This eco-compatible and sustainable approach has allowed innovative financing channels, marked by their low costs, to be activated. For the first time in Italy, in 2014 the group succeeded in placing a green bond with international investors, worth roughly €500m.

Another avant-garde project involves an intelligent street lamp that, in addition to using LED lamps for public lighting with a high level of energy efficiency, will be able to autonomously detect, via video cameras, abnormal or criminal situations and alert law enforcement agencies if necessary. This system can be created thanks to both the infrastructure of fibre optic networks the group has already installed in the areas it serves, and the ability it already possesses to manage large amounts of telematic information. The project launches the utility sector into the realm of big data, a development that will no doubt affect its future evolution.

Innovation and expansion
This innovative approach has led many companies involved in similar business sectors to express their desire to become part of the group. By way of a lengthy series of mergers, spread out over the duration of its existence, Hera has seen the limits of its operating area widen into bordering regions, bringing it to manage a customer base that now includes over three million people. This expansion, projected to continue well into the future, is down among other things to the introduction of government incentives in consolidating the sector (still one of the most fragmented in Europe). It will no doubt contribute to improving scale economies and facilitating overall innovation in infrastructures.

Hera is set apart from its national and foreign peers by the highly innovative nature of its strategies in efficiency enhancement, which guarantee both an excellent level of sustainability and the highest added value for its stakeholders. In everything the group does, there is a constant search for excellence and continuous technological innovation many might not expect from a company operating in a sector commonly thought to be ‘mature’.

Hera puts itself forwards in an innovative way not only in the services it offers, but also in its mission and the values underlying each of its services. Its primary aim is to offer its customers a higher quality of life, giving them savings in time and money and guarantees of lower consumption, and above all making its own contribution to the creation of a healthier environment in which to live.