When addressing the complex issue of energy, the aim has always been to obtain three results:
- competitive prices
– reduction of the environmental impact
– maximum security of supplies.
In other words, your energy policy must guarantee consumers and businesses all the energy they need and when they need it, at a competitive price in our global market and with a sustainable environmental impact.
It seems to me that, either due to the absence of a clear mandate from the Member States, or due to lack of effective legal instruments, or due to mere bad luck, or due to a combination of all three things, Europe has not fully achieved these three goals.
After many years of legislative and regulatory interventions on the subject, we have energy in Europe among the most expensive in the world, energy security is getting worse and we are achieving the emission reduction targets only thanks to the drop in consumption.
We look at the competitiveness of our energy. As I speak to you, citizens and businesses in Europe pay for gas three times as much as in the United States. Their energy bill has halved in the last four years thanks, as is known, to the opportunities offered by the exploitation of the shale gas.
In Europe, in addition to not having, I hope only for the moment, shale gas, we continue to burden the energy bill with indirect costs. Last year alone, European citizens spent over 30 billion euros to subsidize renewable sources, a colossal figure. In Italy, for example, these subsidies amount to over 11 billion euros a year and account for about 18% of the bill. A percentage that borders on insanity.
This situation will continue for years to come. Moving on to the environment, the result isn't much better. While in the corridors of Strasbourg, and even more so in Brussels, the 20-20-20 by 2020 policy was discussed, the international price of coal has collapsed by more than 30%. As a result, coal-fired power generation has exploded and so have emissions. Between 2010-2012, electricity production from gas, much cleaner, was reduced by 25%.
The mechanisms put in place to regulate emissions through certificates have shown no power in the face of market dynamics. CO2 prices have plummeted due to oversupply on the European emissions market. Today they are 5 euros per ton compared to 22 four years ago and, therefore, cannot undermine the competitiveness of coal.
Moving on to the issue of safety, gas-fired plants, which are the natural antidote to renewables in Europe, in the sense that they compensate for their erratic nature, close because they are no longer competitive. In Germany, to give but one example, more than 10 GW of gas-fired generation capacity is expected to be decommissioned by 2015 while more than 7 GW of new coal-fired generation capacity could be built.
In short, unfortunately, or because we are not equipped, our energy policy has not fully achieved the results it set for itself.
As regards competitiveness, the dramatic difference in prices for an essential commodity such as energy is a problem for our industry which competes in the global world with that of the United States. Industries move to the United States where, among other things, there is a skilled, competitive and flexible workforce and a lower cost of money than the European average, with the result that Europe risks becoming poorer and enclosed in herself.
We need a new approach to the energy issue, so that we can look to Europe, its Parliament and its executive with confidence and perceive it as the source of solutions to our problems. I realize that the task is very difficult. Even we who deal with energy from morning to night have no recipes. But we have some ideas.
In the first place we have to clean up our energy bills from improper increases and I am referring here to subsidies for renewables. Some say that renewables are cheaper than other energy sources. If they were, there would be no need for subsidies. The truth is that they are still too expensive.
For this reason, we must only finance research into renewables in order to have renewables in the future that do not need to be subsidized. This is not enough to bridge the competitiveness gap between Europe and the United States. We know for sure that this gap cannot be filled by US gas exports.
Leaving aside the rather thorny question of how much gas can reach Europe, the problem remains the costs. To be transported to us, American gas must be liquefied, put on a ship and then regasified. All of which means that when, and if, it arrives in Europe, it will cost about double what consumers and businesses pay for it on US soil. It is therefore necessary to find our own solution to our problem.
Brussels and Strasbourg must play a primary role in encouraging and enabling research and development of shale gas in the countries of the European Union. There is some shale gas in Europe. We have to find a way to exploit it as they have done overseas and to make this precious resource available at low cost, which is the true development engine of every economy.
Meanwhile, We will always need our own partners traditional energy sources: Algeria, Norway, Russia, Libya. With these countries we have a geographical proximity and a historical commercial relationship that makes them our natural interlocutor. Algeria, Norway, Russia and Libya have the ability to make us competitive. It is also convenient for them to be able to count on a huge nearby market full of opportunities.
Relaunching a constructive dialogue with producer countries is another challenge that must be taken up and pursued by our Brussels executive and by you, our legislator.
