Studio comparato di fattibilità tecnica, economica e finanziaria per impianti di cogenerazione

The choice between a biomass and a natural gas cogeneration plant does not simply concern technological aspects. In fact, policy incentives implemented by the Italian government to encourage plants powered by renewable fuels affect the profitability of the project as well as - more importantly in our perspective - the risk factors of the investment. This article reports the comparative analysis performed to select the optimal choice between a biomass and a natural gas cogeneration system to be built to service a mushroom production plant. The aim is to highlight the importance of the sensitivity analysis to evaluate energy efficiency projects, to detect the different risk factors that the two technologies give rise to and to capture the strategies to implement to mitigate the project global risk. For this purpose, the paper first outlines the procedure followed to design the cogeneration plants. Secondly, for each of the actors involved (ESCO, bank and customer) the paper defines the main variables taken into account to assess the bancability and the profitability of the investment project.