“The European Commission’s climate goals are not only ambitious, but downright unrealistic unless we stop growing and impoverishing ourselves all. Citizens and businesses must be told that the environment must be paid for ”. Davide Tabarelli, president of Nomisma Energia, is one of the most authoritative voices in Italy on the subject of energy. And how to govern energy is one of the big questions raised by the green transition. All the more so that the targets of the Fit for 55 package, the operational arm of the Green Deal, impose a more than accelerated pace of progress if we want to reduce harmful emissions by 55% by 2030 and reach climate neutrality in 2050. “In the last twenty years, energy policies have been made detached from reality: abandoning fossils is impossible, you can try by increasing prices, but continuing in this way the cost of the transition will grow more and more “, Tabarelli says in an interview with Huffpost.
Europe has laid out an impressive road map for the green transition, at least on the long-term goals. Will Italy be able to keep up with this pace?
The objectives of the European Commission are unrealistic. In the next nine years we should be doing much more than we have been able to do in the past thirty. The disproportion between the objectives and the reality is more than evident and therefore the difficulties we will encounter will be many and of various kinds.
Before moving on to the problems, let’s stay on the political track for a moment. If you do not dare on the objectives in the end, the green transition always finds an excuse not to materialize. At least that’s what Europe thinks. Don’t you find this setting right and consistent with the Fit for 55 package?
The Commission has made a legitimate commitment, with a specific mandate given by the Parliament which is elected by the European citizens. It is good to remember that important groups sit in that Parliament, from the 5 Stars to the German and Dutch Greens, which are strongly in favor of a transition of energy systems and the abandonment of fossils. The road is drawn, going back is impossible and it would not even be right, but the objectives as written say that someone will pay a price.
Who will pay this price?
European consumers, both businesses and households.
Why?
If the Fit for 55 package is criticized it is because the knots come to a head. Sometimes politics is revolution, it throws your heart over the obstacle, but it is not enough: the point is that in the last twenty years in the world very easy and ambitious political announcements have been made on energy. But everyone has forgotten that reality exists and that CO2 prices can also be raised, but someone has to pay. The environment must be paid for. The sting of July 1 bills in Italy is proof that we are already paying the costs of the transition.
Revolutions at no cost do not exist.
True. But the paradox is that Europe is in first place for energy prices and yet emits less CO2 per unit of GDP than the United States and Asia. It emits only 8% of the world total. Europeans pay 20-30 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity, in the United States they pay half for much higher consumption and pollution levels.
Explain to us better.
The world can afford to raise energy prices again, but then they have to be managed. I add other elements of imbalance: in the United States there is an enormous use of air conditioners in the face of a very low electricity price. In Italy we pay one euro and ten cents on a liter of petrol which costs 1.6 euro, when in the US the final price is 0.7 euro with 13 cents of tax: too much. It is also okay to pay more, but everyone has to do it and in a balanced way. European citizens, and in particular Italians, must leave the money in their pockets to go to the beach or buy a car that costs little because it has a diesel engine, which lasts a long time and does not need to be changed in ten years. Among other things, this dynamic does not only concern consumers.
That is?
Businesses in Europe pay around 15 cents per kilowatt hour, in the US and China six to seven cents. With the unrealistic targets set by the Commission, prices will rise again and this dynamic will undermine our economic system.
We have come to the problems. What should Italian citizens expect in the coming months?
Surely the bills will go up.
The majority of environmentalists argue that we have to keep going, the quality of our life and that of the planet are at stake. How do you get out of this short circuit that sees the reasons for the environment and those of an important piece of the country’s economy, such as the automotive industry, inside?
Some choices need to be reviewed. Every year we allocate 12 billion to renewables that we all would like to be more developed, but we forget other emergencies such as hydrogeological instability and the safety of our roads. The issue does not only concern us, Germany of billions puts 25 of them a year, but we need to have an overall strategy also because the results are by no means taken for granted. Renewables have grown in Italy, but not solar or wind power, but biomass.
Beyond the factions, how is the energy transition governed?
First of all by correctly informing about its operation. Europe is made up of developed democracies, very attentive, but it must explain well what is happening. The transition will need to be governed with electric mobility, continuing to make investments, but perhaps the first thing we can do is make this commitment global.
Come?
From 1990 to 2019, Europe reduced CO2 emissions by one billion tons, the others increased them by 13 billion tons. This imbalance is not sustainable.
On the home front, what tools can be put in place to guide this transition? The government is thinking of incentives and training for workers in the sectors that will be crushed by this step. That’s enough?
Incentives can be useful, but they are not enough. The risk of state intervention, justified by the climate cataclysm, is that unlike the market it can lead to waste. We have about twenty thousand charging stations for electric cars, but they are almost all empty. The actions can be multiple, such as working on CO2 capture, but this also implies freeing oneself from ideologies and prejudices.
What ideologies?
The capture of CO2 is essentially done by the large oil companies. But these companies are demonized. Italy must also free itself from this ideological cage.
What are the main obstacles that Italy will find on the path of the green transition?
The risk is to continue doing what we have done for the past forty years. We made the first energy efficiency law in 1981 and have made progress since then, but the results are still modest.
The issue is also economic. 20-30% of car component companies are in danger of disappearing. Is this a development that can be mitigated?
If the objectives remain those set by Europe it is very difficult. The ecological transition is a blow to the automotive industry, creates uncertainty, distracts investments.
However, the electric car always remains parked.
Mediation can and must be found. Smaller and more efficient diesel engines can be made. However, man will not be able to do without fossil fuels in the next thirty years, nor will he stop driving the car on petrol or diesel from tomorrow morning. Electric cars imply another type of mobility, another context, and in fact for three years we have had an increase in sales of these cars, even in three figures, but these increases are marginal compared to the total. Electric cars are still a mobility for the rich.
Let’s go back to those who risk paying the highest price. There are 30 million people in energy poverty in Europe. Will the green transition increase the size of this poverty?
Support interventions must be envisaged because energy will cost more. The situation is manageable if compensation measures are put in place such as those currently being made against the two million Italian families who are struggling to pay their bills.
The Recovery money gives a boost to the green transition. Will Italy’s commitment this time materialize into better results than in the recent past?
The issue is not money, but the country’s political disorder. We have an Ecological Transition Minister who was supposed to be the flagship for 5 stars and is now being targeted. Cingolani is a very good and competent person, maximum respect for the Movement, but falling in love and then showing distrust does not help. So we will continue to be in the abyss.
The transition is not just about politics. What contribution can companies make?
Some of the big companies, such as Eni, Enel, Leonardo and Fs, will be able to manage the funds more carefully than they did with state holdings and even earlier with Iri. But private companies are also needed, which create democracy, social structure, innovation. Unfortunately, there is a lack of large private companies who are not very good at working together. Of course this process must not be held back.
Held by whom?
If there is a superintendency that every time says that that type of renewables is not good, if there is always a mayor who is against it, it is evident that renewables are not made. The problem is not ours alone, it concerns the whole of Europe, but it is greater here.
And then there are the citizens. A transition is also made with virtuous behaviors that mature from below. Is there an adequate degree of awareness in Italy on how crucial the green challenge is?
Italy is among the most efficient countries in terms of consumption. But I would be careful to give in to self-exaltation: we are not because we are green but because we have high prices and the price is the most effective tool for efficiency. We are poor in energy and we have always paid a lot of attention, we can certainly be more attentive to consumption, but there are other issues. Certainly, if bills continue to rise, mistrust of the transition will also rise.
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