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Biofuels : sustainable energy?
Tuesday December 16th, 2008 , h.20,30Recently there has been a vivid interest on energy and whether it could be sustainable: the media are constantly presenting us with the latest scientific and technological breakthroughs in this domain. There are people who see in biofuels a resource and other, who consider them as the absolute evil, since they take up the cultivable terrain from the food industry. Very often though, both sides tend to oversimplify the problem.
What are the biofuels? How and where are they used? In what direction are we heading? What is the position of Italy in the international overview for the use and research on these energy sources? We will discuss all these issues with Vito Pignatelli, chemist at ENEA, who has been a researcher on this subject for over two decades, and with Andrea Rossi, economic consultant for various organizations, involved in the debate on biofuels and alternative ways of producing energy. Two complementary points of view on a problem where technology and economy intertwine in a complex way.
Vito Pignatelli
He graduated in Chemistry at the University of Rome "La Sapienza" in 1981 and works at ENEA since 1983, where he is Responsible of the Group "Plant Systems for Industrial Products" in the Department of Biotechnologies, Food Industry and Health Protection. He is also coordinator for the activities aiming to the startup of the Project "Biofuels".He is responsible of various initiatives and research projects of development and verification, financed by the European Union and other Foundations, as well as National and International Organizations. In 1994 he has been appointed International Expert of the European Union for the problems concerning bioenergy and since 1999 he is the Italian representative in the Executive Committee of Bioenergy Implementing Agreement of the International Energy Agency (IEA/BA).
Andrea Rossi
He graduated in Environmental Economy in the Universities of Siena and Oxford. He has a Master's Degree in Environmental Politics from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, he works at "Ecofys Italia" as a Consultant on policies and strategies for energy and climate and he gives lectures on Environmental and Health Politics at the University of Siena. In the past, he has been a consultant at FAO, where he worked on the environmental and social sustainability of biofuel production. He has also worked on the politics in the renewable energy sources and climate changes for the Ministry of Environment and in the United States at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change and the Agriculture Department.