The sustainable hydrogen boost in the industrial cluster of the Sassuolo Ceramic District linked to the port of Ravenna

This thesis aims to provide an understanding of how the world’s leading players are moving toward a new era in which the energy transition through the decarbonisation of entire sectors is something that is finally foreseeable and affordable. This important role belongs to several characters, each one has equal relevance and is able to communicate and collaborate with other parties. In this way, governments, investors, financers, companies and customers can achieve the desired outcomes that bring revenues and welfare to everyone. From this starting point, the most recent energy and sustainable policies are illustrated to strengthen the targets set, with the responsibility and the wish to respect them. After that, new sustainable frontiers come up especially for the industrial sector, a hard-to-abate sector among the hardest to decarbonise and with a share of the final energy consumption of more than 30%. The industrial clusters are the answer to that as they involve many different activities located in a common area with many economic and social interests, all linked together. Actually, there are some unsolved matters but many more studies and tangible evidences demonstrate the potential of these solutions that can make possible the net-zero challenge reachablewithin specific deadlines. The Ceramic District based in Emilia-Romagna, one of the major driving regions in Italy for the industry and the economy, is explored and explained as a case study of this thesis with the aim to overcome the use of fossil fuels, in particular natural gas, with the increasingly important energy vector, hydrogen. Hydrogen can be and will be one of the greatest and “greener” solution to make the ceramic industry, whose impact on environment is huge especially by thermal energy consumption, cleaner and more sustainable during the entire process with technologies already scaled up and commercially available. The port of Ravenna is the perfect energy hub and the cornerstone from which everything can begin and spread to make this energy transition more feasible than ever.