ANALISYS OF CURRENT CO2 EMISSION IN TUSCANY (I.S.R.E. = REGIONAL INVENTORY OF EMISSION SOURCES)
The analysis of the Regional Inventory of Emission Sources allows the evaluation of the total emission of pollutants based on:
- total consumption of fossil fuels;
- emission factors of the industrial activities, transport and power production;
- emission factors from natural sources.
The emission sources have been investigated on the basis of the nature of the activity, the duration in time of emissions, its localization, and the type of fuel used in the combustion process.
Click here for a summary of the greenhouse gas emissions for Tuscany, classified on a provincial basis.
Click here for the map of the CO2 emissions in Tuscany.

BIOMASS AVAILABILITY IN TUSCANY
Starting from a study on the biomass distribution in the territory,
19 "bioenergy production districts" have been defined as a result of a compared GIS based analysis on biomass distribution and the dimensions of the enterprises potentially involved in the biomass pre-treatment phase.
The main steps in the definition of the districts are:
- a GIS analysis in order to locate the biomass distribution;
- definition of the enterprises potentially involved in a biomass project, on the basis of the biomass quality, quantity and seasonal availability;
- Pointing out of efficient size enterprise model;
- Dimensioning of the supply basin on the basis of the enterprise productivity potential;
- A GIS based evaluation of collection/transport costs on the basis of the distance and of the characteristics of the territory.
The shape of each district is then a result of the analysis.

PRELIMINARY STUDY OF BIOMASS-TO-ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES
A preliminary analysis of the costs of energy produced by a plant fed by biomass has been conducted.
In particular, the cost of a electric kWh, versus working hours/year for power plants within the range 0.4-10.0 MWelectric for different electric efficiency values has been evaluated.
Higher efficiencies correspond to the most innovative and technologically advanced systems, and consequently higher capital of investment.

DEVELOPMENT OF A GIS-BASED COMPUTATION ALGORITHM
A GIS-Based Algorithm has been developed and its first releases have been tested.
The source code is written in FORTRAN 90, and it can be compiled in order to be run on any Operating System.
The code works on GIS data stored in free formats both in input and in output (raster data are elaborated as binary matrices, vector data as ESRI Shapefiles and databases as Borland dBase III dbf files); it is then independent from any specific GIS environment.
The code analyses costs and emissions related to the biomass delivered from the production location to the plant, thus producing maps and spreadsheets indicating costs and pollutant emissions. The path for the transport is optimised through the use of a routine mainly based on Dijkstra Shortest Path Algorithm.
The output is available as GIS data that can be elaborated and viewed by any of the most diffused GIS environment.