The post-Covid-19 economic recovery has a powerful ally in decarbonisation and energy transformation towards renewable sources. “The government can speed up this process, unlocking authorisations, debureaucratizing the paths to restart the supply chain, pushing for the strengthening of the grid in the South. Enel is able to set in motion 20 billion investments in three years. Just as many can come from other operators”. Speaks Francesco Starace, CEO and general manager of Enel, on the day in which he receives - strictly by videoconference via the Web - the prize of Energy Manager of the Year 2019 for having "initiated and successfully completed a path of growth and innovation that has transformed the Enel Group into a global leader in the energy sector". “Utilities – continues Starace – are an important recovery tool, with an extraordinary investment lever”. Naturally as long as the government does its part and speeds up the authorization process.
Affirmation shared and relaunched by Giovanni Valotti, president of Utilitalia, which recalls the "50 billion investments already planned and included in the plan" by the 500 member companies (mainly municipal and former municipal companies such as A2A). “It is not a problem of funding but of speeding up permits”.
The Manager of the Year award, assigned by the MUI magazine of which he is editor Andrea Gilardoni, professor at Bocconi University and president of Agici, this year it happened in the midst of the earthquake caused by the Coronavirus pandemic and the collapse in crude oil prices. How much will all this impact on the rapidly changing electricity sector? The crisis could speed up the energy transition – including through the European New Green Deal – while new scenarios open up with the entry of players arriving from other sectors but attracted by the growing business opportunities, new protagonists of the great energy chess game. The competitive pressure on “traditional” operators is increasing, those who have always made electricity their core business. Except that even electricity is no longer what it used to be, technology is transforming its functions and potential. That's why new doors open and new competitors enter. It is a transformation that has already been underway for some years but which has now taken on greater strength and visibility according to what has been documented by the research "Utilities and new entrants in the energy sector between cooperation and competition" curated by Marco Carta and Michele Perotti, respectively CEO and Senior analyst at Agici Finanza d'Impresa, the think tank focused on utilities and infrastructures.
Car manufacturers like Volkwagen and Testhe offering electric services, major oil companies such as Shell who want to steer away from crude oil in evident structural crisis to gas&power, startups and innovative companies that are sucked into oil (such as Evolvere acquired by Eni): there is no shortage of decanting. “The ongoing technological evolution makes the bulkheads between one sector and another porous. We will understand in the next five years where the new frontier is and where it has moved“, says Francesco Starace who is far from worried about the expansion of the market. “The demand for energy continues to grow – he explained – but the demand for electricity is growing at a double pace. This confirms that we are moving towards an ever greater electrification of consumption".
According to the CEO of Enel,” the competition is between sectors rather than between players“. In other words, it's not so much about Volkswagen versus Enel as it is about fossil energy versus renewables. And so if Eni buys Evolvere, Shell buys Sonnen, digital giants such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft use Trojan horses to enter the new and promising electricity market, this demonstrates that "the sector is capable of producing value". What role can gas play? It can represent a transition towards decarbonisation, provided that the commodity is "stable and non-volatile" like oil today.
