Biofuels: the revolution starts in Italy. The world's first plant capable of producing second-generation biofuel on an industrial scale has been inaugurated in Crescentino, in the countryside around Vercelli.

Owned by Beta Renewables, a company born
from a collaboration between the Mossi e Ghisolfi Group (an Italian
chemical industry giant), the American fund TPG (Texas Pacific Group) and the Danish company
Novozymes,
it will be capable of producing 75 million litres of biofuel annually
that does not derive from fossil sources.

The plant stands on a former industrial site of approximately 15 hectares and
is the result of an investment of 150 million euros, also thanks
to the support of the European Commission under the Seventh
Framework Programme for research and development.

The second generation. The bioethanol produced here
is defined as "second generation", meaning it comes from the
processing of non-food biomasses. Biofuels derived from
these processes have an extremely lower environmental impact
compared to those from intensive cultivation of
sugarcane or maize, and can be considered fully
renewable and sustainable.

Lignin at "almost" zero km. The biomass used
in the plant will come mostly from the territory
in which the biorefinery stands: rice straw, agricultural waste and
giant reed (Arundo donax), a species that grows wild on the
banks of the nearby Po.

"Given the abandonment of agricultural land that our
country is experiencing," stressed Guido Ghisolfi, chief executive of
Beta Renewables, "we are studying, in agreement with the Ministry
of Agricultural Policy, a way to make use in the near future
of land that has been abandoned for more than a decade."

PROESA, when chemistry goes green. This is
the name of the technology used to convert cellulose into
simple sugars, which can then be transformed into
alcohol molecules.

A unique chemical process, developed in the laboratories of
Biochemtex, an engineering company of the Mossi Ghisolfi Group, and
at the Research Centre in Rivalta Scrivia (Alessandria), where
a pilot plant to produce biofuels has been in operation
since 2009.

Thanks to an investment in young researchers (many of them
Italian), of 150 million euros and five years of research, the technology
"PROduction of Ethanol from biomasSA" was developed
and, combined with the enzymes produced by the Danish company Novozymes,
uses complex sugars to obtain alcohol, fuels and other
chemical products.

A process that is competitive in terms of costs and that ensures a reduction
in greenhouse gas emissions of close to 90% compared to the use of
fossil-origin fuels.