In the next nine months, agro-energy could save up to 40 million tons of CO2 in Italy. This is what emerged from the workshop "De re rustica: energy, innovation and governance" organized by Enea which promoted an analysis of the strategic role that agriculture can play in the energy development of our country.
Together with other associations, Enea highlighted that the agro-food system requires an energy consumption of around 20 Mtoe, of which 16 Mtoe from agricultural businesses and 3,1 Mtoe from the food industry for a total turnover that contributes over 12% of GDP.
According to Giovanni Lelli, commissioner of Enea, the danger of an energy drift of the agricultural enterprise requires the need to optimize the existing governance for the best valorisation of the sector, to supervise the coherent use of government incentives for renewables and to avoid a often uncontrolled occupation of agricultural land and an excessive increase in no-food productions, which strongly undermine the sustainable development of our country's agricultural and rural system".
The 2010 National Action Plan for renewable energy envisaged a percentage of 45% of all renewable energy produced by 2020 in terms of electricity, heat and biofuels coming from the agricultural system chain. Specifically, a contribution to the European energy policy by 2020 has been calculated for energy savings from fossil sources of about 14 Mtoe and an environmental benefit determined by the reduction of about 40 million tons of C02 in the atmosphere.
