Will the electric car or the natural gas one be the "ecological" car of the next few years? The challenge was launched in autumn 2016: on the one hand Snam with FCA and Iveco, on the other Enel with Renault and Nissan (but also BMW and Volkswagen). And it has been relaunched, by both protagonists, in the last few days. Snam has put in the pipeline, on the occasion of the presentation of the strategic plan 2017-2021 last week in London, an investment program of 5 billion, of which 4,7 in Italy.
SNAM'S PLANS, CNG MOBILITY
With this motivation in the words of CEO Marco Alverà: "The Italian market benefits from the most extensive gas infrastructure on the entire continent and over the next 5 years we will invest 5 billion euros to make our system even stronger, more interconnected and more sustainable , significantly contributing to the creation of the Energy Union and offering an effective solution to the decarbonisation process”. Looking more concretely at the slides presented by the management to the analysts, there are 150 million at stake over five years to build 300 new CNG dispensers for cars and trucks. Preliminary talks, Alverà specified, have been started with three primary operators. It is easy to imagine who they are given that Agip, Api-Ip (which has already signed agreements with both Snam and Enel) and Q8 are the top three networks in the distribution of fuels in Italy. TotalErg could also be in the game.
ENEL'S PLANS, e-MOBILITY
On the other side, that of the electric car, the protagonist is Enel and the plans are no less pugnacious. On the contrary. The investment made by the national electricity champion is about double: "It is 300 million which we will finance in part with European funds - said the CEO and general manager of Enel Francesco Starace, interviewed by FIRSTonline in early March – otherwise the cost will be borne by the supplies that customers will make from time to time. So it won't affect your electricity bills. The approximately 12.000 columns that we will install in two-three years will have both fast and normal charging, and we would like them all to be enabled for Vehicle to Grid (V2G) technology, i.e. capable of withdrawing but also returning, selling it, energy to network according to a patent that we are the only ones to have developed and that we are already successfully testing in the UK and Denmark”.
So there is a turning point even if the numbers may seem small - 300 million in the three-year period 2017-19 - for a group that plans to invest 5,2 billion in renewables and 5,8 billion in networks over the next three years for growth years. The real news is that the investment is calibrated on the expectation of a market of 360.000 electric cars at the end of the three-year period. A real leap forward considering that today there are around 6.000 and they represent just 0,01% of those in circulation. According to Unrae data, stop as of 31 December 2015, there were a total of 36 million cars circulating in Italy at the time. The percentages on the other hand change rapidly elhe latest registrations in February indicate that methane-powered cars account for 1,42% of the approximately 355.000 new cars. The electric ones were 0,06%, the bulk remains diesel (56%) while petrol represents about a third of new registrations.
COMPARISON OF TWO NETWORKS
In the case of fuels, we start from a network with 21.000 distributors – unanimously judged oversized and expensive compared to consumption – based on the statistics collected by the Petroleum Union. Of these, there were just 1.101 methane distributors in 2016 against 358 in 2001, fifteen years ago. The goal declared by Snam with FCA and Iveco, last Octoberwas to double the supply to over 2000 CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) distributors over the next 10 years. The CEO of Snam, Marco Alverà, specified that the cost of the infrastructure will be repaid in part by motorists, in part with long-term agreements with the operators and that the first plants resulting from the three-way agreement will be on the network half 2018.
Precisely 2018 and 2019 are considered to be crucial years for the take-off of the electric car since all the manufacturers have announced new models with a range of 500 km for that period. This is why Enel is pushing the accelerator even further to launch a recharging network throughout the country that allows you to travel the peninsula from north to south, or vice versa, without hitches for supplies. We start from a current network, evaluated by the president of the Environment Commission Ermete Realacci with about 1.700 columns in total (a thousand are Enel ones). Both groups, Snam and Enel, are driven by the European Directive DAFI (on infrastructure for alternative fuels) now approved at European level and being implemented in Italy. And from the need, evident to all, to decongest the big cities from the suffocating pall of pollution for which Italy risks, moreover, a European infringement procedure.
THE PLANS OF THE GOVERNMENT
Who will win the race for new mobility? In the end, the dispute could result in a sharing of the cake: methane could be more successful for large-scale road transport (trucks and trucks) and it is no coincidence that the agreement with Snam also concerns Iveco; the electric car and buses would instead win the primacy in the big cities. But above all, which way will the government push? Development Minister Carlo Calenda baptized the Snam-Fca-Iveco union based on methane; former premier Matteo Renzi had instead asked Enel for a national plan for charging stations. The new Sen (national energy strategy) is expected in April. All that remains is to wait.
