Sustainability is always an important concern when we create new facilities or dedicate existing ones to new uses. We are, for example, developing a new Research Center on the site of a former thermal power plant in Augusta (near Syracuse in Sicily), and it will be dedicated to the use of (botanical) plant species in energy applications.

The Center’s laboratories will study agrivoltaics (i.e., combining farming with energy production) and phytoremediation (i.e., using certain plant species for cleaning up contaminated air, water and soil). The Research Center, which is located on the perimeter of a former thermoelectric power plant, grew out of our collaboration with the National Research Council (CNR)and Sicily’s Science and Technology Park (PSTS).