Something more than simple statements. The words of Sergio Costa, Minister of the Environment, on the transition to renewables, with the use of gas in the middle, reopen a discussion too often suffocated by misleading theories. In an interview with La Stampa, Costa said that “one cannot switch from fossil sources to renewables and hydrogen in one day. It can only be a gradual path, to accompany the development of new clean technologies". Graduality: this is what all those who see the massive use of renewable sources at the end of complex industrial processes and the revision of lifestyles and consumption have been claiming for some time.
Italy has drawn up a National Energy and Climate Plan, which is also quite appreciated in Europe, which however needs to be integrated. They ask us to perfect it, says Costa, and we are implementing the indications. But "the first step is to abandon coal, use gas for the transition and focus on renewables and hydrogen and then also abandon gas". The road to decarbonization thus traced passes through the investments of companies that come to terms with the objectives of climate change to 2030 and 2050. The interventions in the 2020 maneuver are still little in the making compared to ambitious CO2 reduction targets. The Irex Annual Report found that Italian investments in renewables in 2017 amounted to 13,5 billion euros with electricity production rising from 6,8 GW in 2016 to 13,4 GW. Money from Italian and foreign operators who give confidence, but ask for more decisive public intervention is a less confusing vision.
Are Costa's words a change of strategy of the government and in particular of the Cinquestelle? For a Minister like Fioramonti who calls for a moratorium on all searches for fossil fuels for Eni, there is another that provides for its use (ie availability) for a few more years. Eni does not need public defenders but the interview with the Minister of the Environment, with his colleague in clear disagreement, makes sense in that he acknowledges - without saying it openly - that the company of Descalzi and Marcegaglia it is engaged on several fronts to guarantee the country a serene and trouble-free future. From the reconversion of activities, to explorations off the coast of Cyprus, to future supplies of the Eastmed gas pipeline in Salento, to planned extractions in the Adriatic.
What is the use of questioning such a complex industrial strategy? Maybe that in other countries they don't know the gradualness of an epochal process? Let the theorists of our house of "immediately renewable" see well what is written in the Climate Plan regarding traditional sources. Self pragmatism is not in the heart of the Cinquestelle, Italy pays the price and on the most important battle of the next twenty years. Emilia Romagna, through Pd exponent Gianni Bessi, recalls the need for Eni to resume the extraction of 5 billion cubic meters of gas per year, "stopped by the simplification decree". The Eni Polo in Ravenna risks closure and there is no justification for those who create inconvenience rather than opportunity. If Minister Costa has understood this, he can well explain it to his colleagues.
