ENEA - Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development

An international study published in the journal Atmospheric Environment, conducted as part of the European POLYRISK project, in collaboration with ENEA, shows that concentrations of microplastics generated by tires in the air can be up to five times higher in urban areas with heavy traffic, where vehicles brake and accelerate frequently.

ENEA has developed CI-RES an innovative platform designed to support national institutions and operators of essential services in risk assessment and resilience planning. Leveraging a WebGIS interface that integrates territorial datasets, hazard maps, and information on critical infrastructures, CI-RES enables comprehensive analysis of vulnerabilities, hazards, risks, potential impacts, and cascading effects across interconnected systems.

Batteries and supercapacitors made from materials derived from a rice by-product, husk, are at the center of research activities conducted by ENEA, Sapienza University of Rome and the Polytechnic University of Turin. The first results, published in the international journals Molecules and Journal of Energy Storage, show that future electrochemical energy storage devices could rely on two innovative nanostructured materials—carbon aerogels and graphene quantum dots—produced from cellulose found in widely available common biomass.

A major breakthrough has been achieved for the Divertor Tokamak Test (DTT) project, the fully Italian experimental fusion reactor under construction at the ENEA Research Center in Frascati (Rome). The first 170 GHz, 1 MW gyrotron for the DTT Electron Cyclotron Resonance Heating (ECRH) system, has successfully completed its acceptance tests at the FALCON facility in Lausanne, hosted by the Swiss Plasma Centre (SPC). 

A study conducted by ENEA, in collaboration with the Department of Industrial Engineering of the University of Salerno, published in the journal Food, shows that the fruit juice industry could reduce electricity consumption by 20% and thermal consumption by 60% by adopting the innovative PEF pulsed electric field technology with heat recovery from pasteurization

Healthy, nutritious, and tasty crisps, yogurt, and bars are some of the new snacks created as an alternative to so-called "junk food" by the international PROMEDLIFE project, which aimed to promote the Mediterranean Diet as a healthy, sustainable, and accessible dietary model.

According to a study published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, conducted by ENEA in collaboration with the CNR and the MedSharks association - which analyzed in detail the spatiotemporal variability of the 2024 thermal anomaly and the mechanisms that determined it - the Mediterranean is experiencing a record-smashing climate phase with record temperatures in both the western and eastern Mediterranean and heat waves, combined with a significant increase in the average kinetic energy of currents, with 2024 recording the highest value in the entire historical series (40 years).