Italy 100% Renewable: A Suitable Energy Transition Roadmap

TL;DR

This paper presents a detailed roadmap for Italy's transition to 100% renewable energy, emphasizing solar, wind, hydro, and innovative energy storage solutions to meet future demand sustainably.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive plan integrating renewable generation and novel polysaccharide-based storage, with cost analysis and feasibility assessment for Italy's energy transition.

Findings

Renewable energy can fully meet Italy's future demand.

Energy storage via enzymatically synthesized polysaccharides is feasible.

Cost and return on investment are favorable for proposed technologies.

Abstract

We outline a realistic energy transition roadmap for Italy, in which the whole energy demand is met by electricity generated by low cost renewable energy technologies, namely solar photovoltaic, wind and hydroelectric power. We assess the amount of extra power and storage capacity to be installed along with costs, return on investment and payback time. Based on cost, renewable nature and scalability, storage in energy dense polysaccharides enzymatically synthesized from carbon dioxide, water and surplus electricity is proposed to meet the significant storage requirements.