Matteo Codazzi, CEO at CESI, takes part to the RES4MED official launch event in Rome on May 3, 2012. The conference includes among others Corrado Clini (Italian Minister of the Environment), Piero Gnudi (Italian Minister for Tourism) and Francesco Starace (RES4MED President).
Renewable Energy Solutions for the Mediterranean region
South and East Mediterranean Countries are experiencing strong population growth and a considerable urbanization rate, driven by low income and new socio-economic needs. These features lead to an increase in the energy demand – electricity in primis – and a need for new infrastructures.
Southern Countries have large arid and desert areas with high density solar radiation and wind exposure. Despite this favorable context several barriers: technical institutional, financial and market didn’t allow the exploitation of this potential.
Recently many Countries such as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan have adopted national short term programs to boost solar and wind power development. These programs provide local industrial development, components and systems are locally manufactured, and increase the national value chain fostering job creation.
The realization of renewable energy project based on large scale will require considerable efforts to attract investments by international, financial institutions and the private sector.
The Mediterranean Solar Plan, Desertec, Medgrid, MEDREG, Metso and other initiatives move from the idea that electricity from renewable sources must be developed in parallel to its network infrastructure, in order to transfer electrical energy to the southern consumption centers and trade/export any surplus to Europe.
RES4MED
At the end of 2011, CESI, ENEL Green Power, Edison, GSE, PwC and the Polytechnic of Milan have founded a non-profit international association: RES4Med – Renewable Energy Solutions for the Mediterranean, to help and speed up the use of renewable sources and the realization of electrical infrastructures in the Mediterranean and the Balkans.
RES4Med aims to act as a focal point with other institutional and industrial initiatives and associations that have been recently active in the Mediterranean (such as Desertec Dii, Medgrid, MEDREG, OME, TSO-Med, Med Solar Plan) and immediately engage key institutional and energy players of the main countries of the South East.
Since Italy is a natural energy hub of the Mediterranean, both as a potential importer of green energy, both for its geographical position allowing transit of massive amounts of clean energy to the EU, RES4Med aims to its systematic involvement and enhance many technical and economic skills already in place.
An Advisory Board will be established on which will sit representatives of major institutional and industrial initiatives such as MEDREG, Desertec Dii, Medgrid, OME, MED-TSO.
The initiative sought the patronage of the Ministry of Development, Environment, Foreign Affairs and Research, and the Chamber of Commerce of Milan.
Francesco Starace – Enel Green Power – is the President of the Association, Andrea Testi is the Vice- President and Roberto Vigotti will play the role of General Secretary.
Gianluca Marini, head of the Consulting Solution and Services Division of CESI, will sit on the Steering Committee along with Gerardo Montanino – GSE, Ennio Macchi – Polytechnic and Richard Tos – PwC Advisory.
CESI: A worth experience
CESI has been deeply involved since the beginning of the last decade. We have supported STEG (the electricity company of Tunisia) to identify the maximum penetration of wind generation in its country as well as the best connection schemes to the grid formulating the recommendations to fulfill the power quality requirements. Some of these projects are now become reality: the Sidi Daoud wind farm (54 MW) is now in operation and other wind farms are in Construction in North Tunisia.
More recently, in 2011 CESI has been supporting MEMR (the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources of Jordan) to identify the maximum wind penetration level in the country enabling the Ministry to issue tenders for investors in wind farms.
In Libya, CESI has been the referent consultant of REAOL (Renewable Energy Authority of Libya) and after the turmoil of last year, the activities have been restored and now we are examining the connection schemes of wind farms in the Benghazi-Derna region.
CESI has also been active in feasibility studies carried out on behalf of ENEL Green Power aiming at examining the feasible penetration of wind and solar generation in Crete, Tunisia, Morocco, Turkey and Poland.
Finally, it’s worth mentioning that CESI has developed a high efficiency CPV technology that can be successfully deployed in North Africa showing the best conditions for this technology .
