In the context of energy efficiency and decarbonization, recent EU directives and regulations, incorporated into national legislation, encourage the use of industrial waste heat for climate control through district heating networks. As a prerequisite for any support measures, the regulations require a socio-economic cost-benefit analysis of potential waste heat recovery projects and an assessment of their financial sustainability.

To support a broader and more inclusive investigation conducted under Article 10, Paragraph 1 of Legislative Decree 14 July 2020 by GSE on the potential for developing efficient district heating and cogeneration, the focus was placed on the economic aspects of recovering heat from industrial facilities and national thermoelectric plants listed in the European ETS registry, including WTE (Waste To Energy) incinerators operating in Italy.

Using emission data from each facility and drawing on both available original data and authoritative literature sources, the annual quantities of recoverable waste heat were estimated for facilities in various industrial sectors. Consequently, the most suitable types of recovery systems, selected from five pre-determined configurations, were associated with each facility. This allowed for the quantification of the national technical potential for recovering waste heat from the considered plants.

On a statistical basis extended to all potential installations, the unit costs of recovering waste heat for the five hypothesized recovery system configurations were first evaluated.

For each facility, cost-benefit analysis and financial analysis were conducted, separately evaluating the effects of incentives, different heat pump performances, reductions in recoverable heat quantity, and the distance of the district heating network. The financial sustainability of potential operations from the perspective of the industrial operator or the district heating network manager was also examined.

Despite inevitable simplifications and uncertainties, particularly in the cost data for major plant components and ancillary installation costs, the analyses provide a reasonably approximate overview of the economic sustainability boundaries for waste heat recovery projects.

The processed information and developed estimation modules can serve as guidelines for directing programmatic choices on the territory that include the use of waste heat.