Energy, Pichetto Fratin: “We will give hydrogen to the South”, but subsidies for fossil fuels remain high

A story that has been going on for a long time. Hydrogen will redesign Italy's energy system, including the South. Indeed, says the Minister of the Environment Gilberto Picetto Fratin, “hydrogen is an Italian and European challenge. We need twenty million tons by 2030. Italy, in the middle of the Mediterranean, can be a bridge to North Africa." You repeated it yesterday at the Merita Foundation conference in Bari on: "The challenge of hydrogen, obstacles and opportunities for the South".

What is never clearly said is that the cost of hydrogen, obtained by electrolysis from clean sources, is still too high. Applications and technologies are being tested, but it is expensive.

If Italy really believes in the potential of the resource, it must implement public subsidies for energy. It's a central starting point. Rebalance the appropriations between sources that pollute and those that do not pollute is foreseen by all European plans. It just takes a bit of consistency and speed.

The Catalog of Made in Italy emissions

For a few months the Mase website has been available for consultation fifth Catalog of environmentally harmful subsidies and environmentally beneficial subsidies. A document that explains where our country is today and where it plans to go. Five editions available to scholars and strategists from which the state's inability to take new paths clearly emerges.

The most updated data refers to 2021 and to be optimistic, like the government, the horizon for seeing something positive is 2025. Those numbers, in particular after the recent "Ecomondo" event with expert debates on the transition, spread uncertainty.

It is Minister Pichetto Fratin himself who commits in writing in the Catalog to delve deeper into the "proposals for the progressive elimination of environmentally harmful subsidies and for the promotion of environmentally favorable subsidies". When ? In the next edition. That's no good.

An unbalanced expense

Faced with the horizontal slowdown in investments in renewables, the government of Giorgia Meloni it also distances the prospect of the indispensable energy mix useful for achieving more ambitious goals. Who benefits?

2021 has been a complicated year. 77 Environmentally Favorable Subsidies (SAF) absorbed 18,6 billion euros. On the contrary, the 58 Environmentally Harmful (SAD) took 22,4 billion. Another 11 went to Environmentally Uncertain Subsidies (SAI). A structural imbalance in an economy that is not the US one which has 369 billion dollars in green subsidies in circulation.

Joe Biden made a protectionist choice in favor of green industry. He also played an electoral card towards a difficult reconversion and in the meantime sells lots of LNG for the whole world. Italy should study a little better how it is done.

Two more years of stand by?

The data in the Catalog comes from Istat, Ispra, research centres, universities and is summarized in the Interministerial Committee for the Ecological Transition (CITE). It is the place where a gradual removal of subsidies has been established by 2025 in accordance with the principles of not causing further damage to the environment - the Do Not Significant Harm - and the Fit for 55 strategy. Two years of stand by without disrupting a system that is harmful.

The progressive elimination of harmful subsidies is necessary not only for the protection of the environment and quality of life, but "also to support the development of new industrial chains in the sustainability economy, moving away from polluting or energy-intensive practices".

In this process the government says that "the pipelines that carry gas can also carry hydrogen". In addition to transporting it, Italy must think about producing it at adequate costs to sell it. As long as the subsidies go to fossil fuels, things won't add up.