Energy Rural Silo: An innovative project for both recovering rural abandoned towers and installing little sized biogas system

The massive and continuous development of renewable energy systems is making it possible to achieve the European goals set by the EU related to environment and sustainability. Anyway it also leads to the progression of significant problems such as low renewable energy density (i), social acceptability (ii) and non-programmability of renewable energy sources (iii). The rural architectures which characterize the central Italy landscape are characterized by several elements such as dovecotes (i), grain stores (ii) and tobacco’s dry kilns (iii). Although these towers are bound as Environmental and Historical Heritages, the buildings seem to be in decay because of the decline of the agricultural activities. The aim of the present work is to recover a rural abandoned silo, which is located in Sant’Apollinare (Marsciano, Perugia), in order to convert it into a mini-biogas plant. Thus, the silo's function changes from agricultural use to energy: it becomes a spot on renewable energy-based electric grid and it permits to produce clean energy from agricultural and forestry residues. The project turns out to be sustainable not only in terms of energy and environment, but also from an economic point of view due to the recent regulation on incentives for renewable energy production.