Sustainability

Innovation, Excellence and Sustainability are the values that inspire us, they are our guidelines. We however don’t want them to remain just intentions and words: because ideas are valid only when they are realized.
In 2009, our company had to face a need: the Eternit fibre cement roofing for the San Maurizio plant needed to be replaced, an operation that would have involved a considerable financial commitment. We thus tried to combine need with investment, expense with savings, growth with respect of the environment.

SYSTEM FOR SAN MAURIZIO D’OPAGLIO
The idea to replace the fibre cement roofing with a photovoltaic system was thus created, which allowed us to resolve the roofing problem while at the same time cutting the costs related to the consumption of energy and reducing our environmental impact by lowering CO2 emissions. The San Maurizio system began producing energy in 2010, and it produced 211,935 kWh in its first year of operation: a value that is slightly lower than that foreseen during the design phase (set at 214,000/year) due to a few problems that limited its operation during the start-up phase. The system produced 245,689 kWh (14% higher than the expected value) in 2011 and 227,120 kWh in 2012 (in line with the design expectations).

SYSTEM FOR BERZONNO
Considering the success of the system at the San Maurizio plant, we thus decided to proceed in a similar manner with the Berzonno plant, which also needed its roofing replaced. The creation of the second system involved a few problems related to the fact that the plant is located on a hill where there is an early shading of the sun. We thus decided to go ahead with a larger size system than the previous one, and combining two different technologies: one part of the system was made of cadmium telluride (which provides higher efficiency with less direct sunlight) and the other, for the more exposed part, was made of polycrystalline. The system has been operational since 2012 and has currently lowered our CO2 emissions by 450 tonnes.