Introduction
Programme
Agreements are an important operational tool introduced by the Italian Law n.
139/92 into protection procedures. In the case of strictly interconnected
measures involving a number of different authorities
and institutions,
the Programme Agreement enables a joint action
plan to be identified, integrating the measures to be carried out by the
different bodies and, if necessary, appointing a single implementing body.
Irrespective of the implementing body, responsibility for achieving the
individual objectives specified in the programme
agreements remains with the legally responsible institution. Coordinated and
unitary implementation of the various measures within a Programme
Agreement improves operational efficiency, optimizes implementation times,
reduces costs and mitigates the inconvenience for citizens.
The Programme
Agreement for the Porto Marghera Industrial Area
Municipal Venice covers nearly 460 sq.km and is the largest
administrative area in the Veneto region. The Council’s catchment area covers a diverse
demographic base, and a population of 266,188 residing in the historical city
centre, the main islands and most of the urban mainland of Mestre and Marghera
(see the map).
The industrial area of Marghera is one of the largest
concentrations of heavy industry (oil refinery, chemicals,
advanced materials and shipbuilding) and energy production in Italy. In spite of the crisis which these industrial
sectors have gone through in recent decades, a basic redevelopment of the area
is under way, with new, high-tech technologies gaining momentum.
Apart from the petrochemical plants, other industries
present in the area are: a petrol refinery, industrial plants for the
production and transformation of non-ferrous metals (alumina, copper and zinc),
seven thermoelectric power plants and five waste incinerators.
In this area more than 1,000 emission points into
the atmosphere have been counted.
In order to promote a preventive
approach and to establish a
cooperative approach aiming at efficient environmental protection, some authorities,
institutions
and private companies operating in this area have committed themselves to
the “Programme Agreement for the Porto Marghera
Industrial Area”.
Objectives
The first objective of the Agreement is to create and
maintain optimal conditions for
coexistence between environmental
protection, development and transformation in the chemical sector, in a
framework of management certainties in Porto Marghera.
Specific
aims of the Agreement’s are:
- to reclaim and protect the environment through clean-up;
to improve or start up programmes for
remediating sites; to reduce emissions
into the atmosphere and in the Lagoon
water ecosystem and to prevent the risk
of major industrial accidents;
to attract adequate
industrial investment; to supply the existing industries
with the best environmental and process technologies and make
them competitive at European level, thus guaranteeing
the economy over time and ensuring the maintenance of
employment and giving it a new momentum and improving
it.
Reference area
Porto Marghera is formed by more than 2,000 hectares
of industrial plants and port canals between the Lagoon and the city. It is
characterized by urban deterioration and by the presence of neglected areas as
well as much obsolete/absent
primary infrastructure and by pollution. Although these
problems exist, it still represents an
essential centre within the economic system of north-eastern Italy.
The Programme
Agreement interests all chemical, oil and energy companies of the area,
consistent with the aim of the Municipal Land Use Plan, that has imposed
the definition of specific objectives and the activation of economic,
administrative, organizational and promotional procedures able
to support and realize the planned actions, with real time verifiable effects.
The following
objectives deserve to be mentioned:
- increase the value of the port and industrial functions;
- create compatibility conditions, not conflict, between
the industrial area and the surrounding city;
- reorganize the relational system according to a triple
point of view:
a. to improve the railway network;
b. to create road connections with the productive
mainland;
c. to separate urban and industrial traffic;
d. rewrite the spatial planning rules, distinguishing and
fostering the vocations of the different parts of the area and taking
into account, from a new point of view, all the complicated
matters linked to patrimonial realities, implementation
procedures and
environmental remediation problems.
The Municipal Land Use Plan for Porto Marghera is
intended to return the industrial area to the market, with the only the
necessary indications for its proper development (the technical-scientific, port,
mixed and industrial characterization).
Interventions
A. Actions to protect the environment:
a1) excavation and reclamation of
the industrial port canal network;
a2) dismantling the
abandoned plants, containment of dangerous sites and/or their remediation;
a3) definition of limits for waste
water in the Venetian Lagoon for “first
rain” pre-treated waters and water used
for cooling processes;
a4) introduction of guidelines for
a safety plan in the port area;
a5) risk reduction in goods
transport;
a6) remote control of dangerous goods
transport;
a7) implementation of the
voluntary Agreement for the environmental certification of chemical industries;
a8) realization of the integrated
system for environmental monitoring and management of industrial and emergency risks (the SIMAGE system,
see the short
presentation);
a9) achievement
of an ecologically equipped area.
B.
Investment
and employment protection:
b1) Investment.
Companies that accept the Agreement and respect the consequent commitments will
be guaranteed, on the one hand, operational
certainty for the total economic capital consumption allowance period
and, on the other hand,
simplified authorization procedures (see next paragraph) to be
activated on the basis of the improvements
already ascertained under this
Agreement. A significant part of investment
must be directed to improving environmental performance and safety in industries.
b2) Employment protection:
A “Permanent Committee” composed of local authorities
and social counterparts
has been
established, to ensure protection of the employment level
during the transformation processes of this productive area. As for the
reduction in atmospheric pollution, investment to
improve the processes included in the Agreement should allow for the reduction
of all micro- and macropollutant
emissions. Such reductions are explicitly quantified in the document.
Authorization
procedures and controls
In respect of their
investments, the partner companies will produce, within twelve months of
approval of the
Agreement,
one single application to the Veneto Region, which will include all the requests for
authorizations provided for by the law, enclosing
therein the E.I.A. (when required by the law) or an
explanatory report on the state of permits, that should in any event be sent within the
following six months.
To reach the emission reduction objectives, that are
specified for each company, the competent authority
will provide the verification and updating of the permits for each single
plant, in accordance with
the criteria of
the best available technologies (to minimize emissions), in order to make them
conform to the real situation.
Porto
Marghera Industrial Area Programme Agreement: full-text
document (in Italian language)
Porto
Marghera Industrial Area Programme Agreement (addendum): full-text
document (in Italian language) and cover page.
The Protocol Agreement for the Murano Island Glass Industry
Programme Agreement. In Italy artistic glass production is located in three
regions: Veneto (150 glass furnaces), Tuscany (30 furnaces) and Campania (12 furnaces).
The glass industry has a very long tradition
in the Venetian secondary sector, and it is concentrated on Murano Island (north of Venice, in the Venetian Lagoon, see the map).
Murano’s output is about 12,000 - 13,000 ton/year, by
means of 400 furnaces that work in a
discontinuous cycle. In 1995, the sector employed 1,376 workers, one-third
less than in the ‘80s.
The specific characteristic of glass is the way it
solidifies, passing from a liquid to a solid
state, obtained at a temperature of about 500 °C (centigrade) through an increase in its viscosity. In this interval of time, the so-called
"workable thermal interval", the Glass Master can give shape to
objects, the finished products of which will retain the rigidity of a solid
body while maintaining the transparency of liquid. Glass is composed of about
70% sand and silica which is transformed into a liquid state at a temperature
of 1,700 °C. In order to melt the silica at a lower temperature a
"flux" used as a melting agent is
added.
The characteristic cycle of production is
distinguished by two
main steps:
-
fusion
of the mixture that will vitrify;
-
working
and shaping of glass.
-
The most widely used furnace is the slow-baking
furnace with a medium capacity of 500 kilograms per
day. Fusion is characterized by a discontinuous cycle, 8 hours a day (from 5
p.m. to 1 a.m.), for up to 5 days a week and, for smaller furnaces,
up to 8-10 times a month Peak emissions deriving from combustion (gas and
particulate) in the atmosphere occur during this step and can be estimated as
8 hours per day.
After that, the temperature is lowered
(from 1
a.m. to 6a.m., switching-off
of the slow-baking furnace) to reach
the conditions needed to work and shape the objects (starting from 7 a.m.). Shaping of glass occurs at 1,050 °C and it is
characterized by 10-time
lower emissions than the fusion phase.
Working days are about 200 a
year and taking into account the cycle’s characteristics and the pause in
production during the summer and winter time, if we assume
that all the furnaces make one fusion per
day: we will have significant air emissions for 1,800
hours a year. Generally the furnaces make new glass 2-3 times a week.
The main
pollutants in gaseous and particulate emissions are:
-
particulate
matter, deriving from evaporation processes;
-
nitrogen
oxides, deriving from the combustion process that occurs at high temperatures
and from the use of nitrates in the mixture;
-
gaseous fluoride, coming from raw materials used
to fluidize, refine and delustre
the glass;
-
arsenic compounds: from raw materials needed to
refine the glass;
-
cadmium compounds: used to colour the glass (red,
orange and yellow);
-
antimony compounds: used instead of arsenic;
-
other metal compounds (chromium, cobalt, nickel,
selenium, manganese, lead, copper and tin): used to colour the glass.
-
In 1999, the Ministry of
Environment, the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Public Health,
together with the Veneto Region, the Province of Venice, the Municipality of
Venice, the Association of the manufacturers and the craftsmen and the Murano
companies manufacturers of glass signed the Programme
Agreement to improve the environmental impacts (with special regard to air and
noise) and to adopt emission limits in the
atmosphere lower than the those outlined in the National Decree 1990-07-12.
The Programme Agreement
quantifies such limits for each step of production
and points out the possible technological solutions to make furnaces suitable as
regards meeting the limits.
One best available technology is “oxycombustion”,
that is the combustion via oxygen to obtain higher energy
efficiency. By lowering
fuel consumption, fume volume and evaporation processes
from slow-baking furnaces
(due to the low speed of fumes passing over the
surface of the glass) it is possible to reduce the hourly pollutant emissions
by up to 50%.
Protocol Agreement.
The Venice Municipality, Artambiente (the association
that brings together the
majority of the Murano enterprises which
have signed the Programme Agreement to
reduce the environmental impact of the glass factories) and Sapio Group S.p.A.,
a company in the field of technical and medical gases, have signed a protocol
agreement to experiment with “oxycombustion”, that is the use
of pure oxygen for the furnaces of the glass factories on the island of Sacca
Serenella (part of Murano Island).
The project, that suggests the
adoption of the combustion oxygen/natural gas as a technological solution to
energy and environmental problems in the Murano area, envisages the realization
of a number of technical steps: a pipeline in
the lagoon for the transport of gaseous
oxygen from Porto Marghera, centre of the Sapio plant, to Murano, a receiving
centre on the island, pipelines to connect the users and to
distribute oxygen within each glass factory, the
conversion of the furnaces from air/natural gas
combustion to oxygen/natural gas combustion.
To evaluate the advantages
and results of this technology, it was decided to experiment for 2 years on the
island of Sacca Serenella, where 5 glass factories operate;
liquid oxygen transported from the mainland to Murano will be used, without
having to build, for now, the connection pipeline to
Porto Marghera.
The checking and
monitoring of this operation will be carried out by the Experimental Glass
Station that is committed to evaluating quality, functioning and environmental
results. This new combustion process should solve the problem of NO, CO2, HC
and PM emissions in the atmosphere caused by furnaces, thus allowing the
adjustment of the plants for artistic glass production to the
emission limit values identified by the National Decree 1990-07-12.
The purpose of the experiment is to evaluate, for artistic glass factories established in Murano, the
environmental and technical-economical
feasibility of converting the furnaces to oxycombustion and therefore
to have at their disposal all the necessary
indications for the final application of this technology.
Protocol Agreement on
oxycombustion on Murano
Island: extract from the Municipal Energy Plan (in
Italian language)
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