Power from bio-sources in Italy incentives and results

In Italy most of the technologies for producing power from bio-sources, as well as from other non-conventional renewable Energy Sources (RES), are rather mature, but their exploitation is still not completely convenient from the economic point of view. It depends on many factors, such as designing of plants, selection of energy conversion system and components, selection of installation site, size of market still too limited, high production costs of the technologies and lack of adequate financial supports. In the early nineties, in the attempt to overcome this situation, the Italian Government issued a series of measures addressed mainly to the power production from RES. This gives a short description of the regulations in force and some details about an important incentive tool (CIP 6/92 and relative decrees) for RES power plants installation. In particular, it indicates the possible power plant typologies, the criteria to assimilate the fossil fuel plants to RES ones, the present prices of electricity transferred into the grid and the methodology for updating the prices. Furthermore, the paper gives some data concerning submitted proposals, plant operation planning and their geographic distribution according to different bio-sources typologies.