 Yesterday afternoon, in the course of the current session of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, a packed hall of delegates representing the countries split up territorially into islands in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans attended the presentation of an energy technology making Italy a world leader in solutions designed to counter the oil crisis.
The meeting, organised by UNIDO – the United Nations Industrial Development Organization – with the support of the Italian Permanent Representative to the United Nations, showed the diplomats and representatives of Non-Governmental Organisations of the exciting prospects being opened up by exploiting marine currents to generate electricity using the Kobold patented vertical axis turbine, invented by Ponte di Archimede S.p.A. (PdA) under its chairman, Elio Matacena. This technology has already been in operation for four years in the Strait of Messina, and supplies the Italian power grid.
With the medium-intensity (about 2 metres/second) marine currents in the Strait of Messina the prototype installed 150 m off the coast of Ganzirri generates 40 kWh, and is constantly being optimised, and its output increased. Small remote archipelagic islands, such as Fiji, Jamaica, Antigua Barbuda, the St Vincent and the Grenadines, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Indonesia, the Bahamas, Mauritius, East Timor, the Comoros, Papua New Guinea have marine currents at least twice that speed. They will be able to exploit this new source of clean and renewable energy as a driver for the establishment of small agrifood and fisheries businesses. The debate, at which the speakers included the Indonesian Minister for the Environment, Dana Kartakusuma, the UNIDO Senior Adviser on Energy, Ali Cahit Gurkok, and Ambassador Aldo Mantovani, focused on the economic sectors that can improve the quality of life of the island-dwellers with the installation of cold chains to be able to export the plentiful fisheries resources that so far have only been able to cater for local consumption, and desalination plants which will supply many of the homes in the archipelagos with piped fresh water.
The interest aroused not only by the presentation but also by the mock-up simulating the operation of the technology, give rise to numerous questions from the floor, which were answered by Emilio Vento, the project head for UNIDO, and chairman Elio Matacena, with the support of the Deputy Chairman of PDA, Ludovico Fulci and the company engineer, Helena Eriksson.
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