Since 1992, the LIFE Programme has been the main instrument for financing environmental and climate protection actions in the European Union. In these nearly 30 years it has supported thousands of projects, from the creation of Natura 2000 sites (one just a few kilometres from our company!) to the development of more efficient products and industrial processes significantly reducing their impact on the environment and on Man. (You can scroll through the best projects of recent years by clicking on this link).
To apply to be part of LIFE it’s necessary to submit a “very detailed project proposal“, including technical details, budgets, a description of positive impacts and a prototype that has been demonstrated and works. The project undergoes a careful process of analysis, evaluation and selection by experts from the European Commission. On average, only about 3-4% of the submitted proposals pass this stage.
We are proud to announce that, after about a year of evaluation, the European Commission has decided to finance Palazzetti’s innovative project, which will become part of the LIFE network!
Our goal is to create a pellet stove capable of significantly reducing emissions into the atmosphere: today we’ll give you a small preview of the LIFE Green-Stove project, in collaboration with ATech Elektronika (Slovenia) and RV Distribution (Belgium), Palazzetti’s partners in this project.
The current situation and environmental objectives
Currently in Europe, in the residential sector, only 27% of energy used to heat our homes is generated by renewable sources, surpassed by 11 points by natural gas (non-renewable!).
Among ‘green’ sources, biomass accounts for around 96% of the total, with pellet consumption continuing to grow. This fuel is perfectly in line with the objectives of the European Green Deal, the programme by which Europe aims to “become the first continent with a zero-climate impact”. The goal is to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050.
But how are things going at the moment? They are improving, but we can do better. And the LIFE Green-Stove project wants to promote this “better”.
How? First by improving the efficiency of the current standard for pellet stoves from 87% to 92%.
But above all by drastically reducing emissions, specifically of carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx), organic gaseous compounds (OGC) and fine dust (PM). By glancing at the graph below you can see the limits imposed by the European Union (red), the standard of current pellet stoves (grey) and the target of the LIFE Green-Stove project (green).
Pellet stove emissions: European limit, current market standard, desired level for Palazzetti’s new LIFE Green-Stove.
Efficiency will not only be considered in terms of energy consumption and drastic reduction of emissions, but also from a broader end-user perspective.
LIFE Green-Stove aims to reduce the accumulation of dirt (e.g. ash) in the different components of the stove, thus limiting product maintenance over time. The stove can also be connected to a network for big data analysis, so that over time it will be able to provide predictive maintenance and significant energy savings, through the use of Artificial Intelligence.
For now, we will have to wait a little longer to see the results (the stove will be on the market, at an affordable price, at the beginning of 2024), but it will certainly be an interesting journey. You will soon be able to follow it with us step by step, thanks to a mini-site that will show all the developments, month by month.
Who knows, maybe at Project Fire 2022 we’ll even give you some more interesting details!
