The future is moving towards an energy system different from the current one: highly efficient, renewable and immediate. For this reason, it is necessary to promote innovative technologies to pursue the development of a green economy connected to the environmental sustainability and the reduction of food waste. This study lays the basis of a different approach on the interaction between solar production and bio enhancement of organic residual flows of a fruit and vegetable market in Southern Italy. The proposed method consists in the installation of a photovoltaic system to cover the energy needs, including the electricity demand for the use of forklifts. This innovation is linked to the sustainable management of residual agri-food waste that, properly treated, allows the production of a soil improver usable in the early stages of the product life cycle. Therefore, the optimization of the entire agri-food chain permits the achievement of the requirements needed to obtain important environmental labels, signs of transparency and safety for the market products.  The results emerged from an economic analysis justify the investment for the realization of the system: the optimal exploitation of the renewable source allows an annual profit which drastically reduces the payback periods of the investment.

In a scenario where there is a tendency to continuous processes to reduce dependence on carbon energy, hydrogen is an emerging, efficient, and highly sustainable choice. In particular, in the field of application, the fuel cell is among the most promising technologies, protagonist, in recent years, of technological advances such as to make it an absolutely valid choice for the production of clean energy. This study lays the basis for a new concept of sustainable industry proposing an energy solution interacting between solar production and equipment for the handling of materials powered by fuel cells. In this context, the main objectives are related to the reduction of CO2 emissions, to limit downtime and pursue a streamlining of the management and distribution of goods within a fruit and vegetable market in southern Italy. The proposed method consists in the installation of a photovoltaic system to cover the energy needs, including the electricity demand for the use of forklifts powered using green hydrogen. This investment is closely linked to a smart management of the industrial sector, able to offer different advantages over the use of other technologies in terms of energy and environmental sustainability and safety. The proposed configuration has a 454.3 kWp photovoltaic system divided into 59 sub-installations of 7.7 kWp each, each of them is capable to produce enough energy for the production of green hydrogen need to fuel a forklift for an entire year.