In mid-October, the European Commission announced a list of 248 projects of common interest (PCI) in the field of energy infrastructure; in this list there are 140 projects related to the transmission and storage of electricity, a hundred for the development of gas and LNG networks and still others related to oil and smart grids.
The selected projects will go to integrate European energy markets, promoting competition but also the diversification of the resources exploited by the Member States; moreover, they are oriented to put an end to energy isolation, where necessary, and to reduce total CO emissions2by encouraging the use of renewable energies.
Strengthened by these peculiarities, the projects will benefit from greater transparency, facilitations in terms of bureaucracy (for licenses and authorizations) and administrative costs, and will be allocated to them 5,85 billion euros disbursed by the European Connecting Europe Facility fund for the period 2014-2020. The economic support is aimed both at speeding up the infrastructure creation times and at attracting the necessary new investors, considering that the total amount useful for the realization of the projects, according to European estimates, is around 200 billion euros.
The list of projects will be updated every two years by the Commission, which is responsible for monitoring their correct development according to the set objectives, in compliance with the conditions of Community progress which are essential for obtaining funding. The end result of this integrated energy market, if carefully expanded and exploited competitively, will be to offer final consumers the best services at the best price.
As regards the electricity sector, Italy is involved in the development of interconnections with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, Montenegro, and in a project for the creation of accumulators in the south of the country. New interconnections with Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Slovenia, Croatia and Malta are also planned in the natural gas sector, together with the installation of a regasification terminal in the Adriatic. The TAP project, the gas pipeline that will link the Caspian to Puglia, is located within the Southern Corridor – the infrastructures destined to bring gas from Azerbaijan to Europe. Also noteworthy is the joint commitment with France relating to smart grids and the expansion of the Trieste-Ingolstadt oil pipeline.
Attachments: Complete list of PCIs divided by country
