The Piedmont Regional Council has greenlit a funding call for asbestos removal from buildings owned by Municipalities, Provinces, and the Metropolitan City of Turin. The call is set to open by July 2025, backed by €3.141 million in regional funds allocated for the 2025-2027 period.
Priority will be given to interventions on buildings where risk assessments—evaluating degradation levels and exposure risk—have confirmed an urgent need for remediation to address potential dangers to public health and the environment.
“Our commitment to tackling this long-standing issue, which we’ve worked on for years, continues,” stated Matteo Marnati, Regional Councillor for Environment and Energy. “Simultaneously, we are advancing our asbestos mapping activities, exploring new methods and technologies. Thanks to the regional government’s reorganization, a dedicated sector will soon begin drafting the new Regional Asbestos Plan.”
Alongside promoting asbestos-containing material removal, the Piedmont Region, through its Environment Department and with support from ARPA Piemonte (Regional Environmental Protection Agency), has maintained and updated a map of both anthropogenic and natural asbestos presence since 2004. For anthropogenic asbestos, mapping focuses particularly on roofs, identified via remote sensing and artificial neural networks.
The Region has also contributed—and continues to operate—in the remediation of National Priority Sites (SIN) in Casale Monferrato (Alessandria), dealing with the legacy of the Eternit plant, and Balangero (Turin), a former asbestos mine.
As highlighted in the recent Strategic Asbestos Committee meeting, the Region plans to promote initiatives in the coming years incentivizing asbestos removal on private buildings. This dual-purpose approach aims to remove asbestos roofing while simultaneously installing renewable energy systems, particularly photovoltaic panels.