Created in 1962 as the Italian National Electricity Board, ENEL is today an industrial holding company. It is Italy's largest power company, and Europe's second listed utility by installed capacity. In the last decades, together with the traditional operations (production, transmission and distribution), steps have been taken to develop new business areas.
ENEL operates with conventional energies like coal and oil as well as renewable energies. Some branches of the company are in fact devoted to the research and application of new technologies like hydroelectric, wind, solar and geothermal energy.

 

The thermal power plant "Andrea Palladio" is made up of 5 generator units with a total output of 1136 MW. Generator units 1, 2, 3 and 4 mainly use coal (although fuel oil and natural gas are also used in the start-up phase) and unit 5 uses natural gas only.
Sophisticated systems for reducing environmental impact allow the plant to be located alongside the Venice lagoon.
Since January 2001 the "Andrea Palladio" thermal power plant has been operating an Environmental Management System which has been certified as compliant with the UNI EN ISO 14001 standard, a certification that both ensures compliance with all environmental protection requirements and formalizes the commitment to work constantly to improve environmental efficiency.
This system became effective in September 2002 when the plant obtained the EMAS certificate, the European-level certification of environmental quality.
The publication of the Environmental Statement confirms the ongoing, open dialogue with the local area.

After a testing period, the plant is now able to safely use 35,000 tons of RDF (Refuse Derived Fuel), which is equivalent to the waste produced by 150,000 citizens: using RDF instead of coal as fuel for the plant's boilers allows the recovery of its energetic content and avoids the landfill disposal and the emission of 27,000 tons of CO2 per year. During 2008 ENEL obtained the authorisation to double the amount of RDF used.