Enel Green Power (EGP) is a key partner of Wendy project and plays a role in environmental and technological impact assessment of wind energy and is in charge of two of the pilot areas in Italy and in Spain.
Enel Green Power is the Enel Group company dedicated to the development and operation of renewable energy plants. The Rome-based company has over 1,300 plants around the world: in Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania. World leader in clean energy, with a total capacity of approximately 63 GW and a generation mix that includes wind, solar, geothermal and hydroelectric, as well as storage plants. Thanks to technological innovation and internationally recognized operational excellence, Enel Green Power also works on repowering, i.e. the repowering of existing renewable plants, to increase their efficiency and reduce generation costs. On the environmental sustainability front, the company’s development strategy aims to close all remaining coal plants by 2027, subject to authorization from the competent authorities. But not only that, the long-term ambition is even greater: 100% renewable production and zero emissions by 2040.
The team Environment and Impacts Mitigation at Innovation of EGP to foster the renewable energy sustainability and the stakeholder engagement.
In the WENDY project, a group of five people are involved, focusing on improvement of environmental sustainability and the social acceptability enhancing of wind energy. Key people include:
Miriam Di Blasi, head of Environment and Impacts Mitigation at Innovation of EGP, and Silvia Masci, senior project manager, lead the initiative project to validate tools and technological solutions able to monitor, detect and preserve birds and bats species, taking into account habitat management actions, adopting the best practices available and designing innovative environmental solutions.
Maria Genovese and Giulia Pasquale, experts in biodiversity and circular economy, support in activities carried out related to social acceptance of turbines and citizenship of wind energy.
Roberto Andres Vallejo, senior innovation specialist, as focal point for the activities related to the Spanish use case.
Wendy project a key initiative to foster the wind energy growth.
The Wendy project offers the opportunity to cooperate in the wind energy sector, at EU level, with the best experts, coming from universities, utilities, energy communities, environmental consultants, and Renewable Energy Associations.
In details, Wendy aims at engaging wind energy key stakeholders in order to raise their awareness, identifying with them local needs and objectives for socially inclusive and sustainable wind farms development. The implementation of the roadmaps with details of the local vision and objectives will allow to identify the sequence of steps required for either enhancing participation in- and improving co-existence settings around turbines or planning new wind farm projects by employing participatory process from the starting point.
Another important target of Wendy’s in which EGP is very interested is the development of integrated modeling tools and validated methodologies to assess the effects of wind farms on the local natural environment and tools to Identify the optimal location for turbine siting through a Holistic Impact Assessment.
Within the WENDY project, EGP is also involved in investigating the environmental impacts of wind turbines, in the scouting of new technologies to mitigate these impacts and in the tests on-field to validate their effectiveness.
Authors: Silvia Masci and Miriam Di Blasi