Data analysis of atmospheric emission from geothermal power plants in Italy

Abstract

Electric production from geothermal energy is still little exploited compared to its large potential and to the World renewable energy production from other sources. Some countries have exploited this energy source in order to enhance their transition to renewables. Today the largest geothermal energy producers in the world are New Zealand, U.S.A, Mexico, Philippines, Italy, Iceland, and, more recently, Turkey (Geothermal, 2012).Differently from other renewable sources, geothermal energy produces impacts on the environment that are very site-specific because of the nature of the resource and its geological characteristics Bravi et al.,2010; Parisi et al.,2013. In the same way, the atmospheric emissions associated to the activity of geothermal power plants for electric or heat production (mainly CO2, H2S, NH3, Hg, CH4) are also site-specific. In fact, due to technological and geographical differences among the geothermal installations operating all over the World, it is quite impossible to identify and attribute typical emission patterns, to perform forecasts valid for multiple sites or to collect universal data. Furthermore, it is virtually impossible the comparison among technologies located in different regions or countries. Definitively, inventories of primary data, as accurate and complete as possible, are essential to correctly evaluate the peculiarities of geo-thermoelectric energy production Parisi et al.,2018.Data reported here try to fill the gap in respect to the Italian situation. To this end, a complete survey of the atmospheric emissions from all the geothermal power plants in operation in the Tuscany Region is performed. In addition to data reporting, also some statistical analysis is performed to process data and to operate a further level of simplification which averages the emissions on the basis of geothermal sub-areas.The data collected is related to the research article “Life cycle assessment of atmospheric emission profiles of the Italian geothermal power plants” Parisi et al.,2019.