Tax incentives to implement the European directive for energy efficiency. This is one of the indications that emerge from the hearings in the Productive Activities Commission of the Chamber and Industry of the Senate, where Assotermica (which brings together the manufacturers of heating systems), the Business Network and Confindustria are paraded.
The European directive intends to establish a common framework for the promotion of energy efficiency in the Union, with the aim of saving 20% of primary energy in the EU by 2020, which the commission estimates at 368 million tons of oil equivalent (mtoe).
"It would be desirable - said among other things Agostino Conte, of Confindustria, vice president of the technical committee for energy and the market - that the draft directive be completed with a financing mechanism that recovers the resources for the investments necessary for the 'energy efficiency". According to the industrial representative, it is in fact "essential that the States can resort to the instrument of general taxation to find the economic resources necessary to finance the appropriate incentives, avoiding further burdening the parafiscal components of the price of electricity and gas" . Because - explained Conte - technologies for energy efficiency should be considered in the same way as an investment in infrastructure and therefore it would be appropriate to envisage "specific rules to enucleate this type of investment from the European constraints of tax policy".
For Assotermica, the president Paola Ferroli remarked how it is "important to guarantee that the incentives are made structural and communicated widely in order to succeed in accelerating the transformation of the market". And in particular, he called for the introduction of the "thermal energy account" which provides for "a lump-sum premium, or rather an incentive for efficient system management, based on the gas tariff and which would be enjoyed by the owners of solar thermal systems, generators condensing, hydronic heat pumps and micro chip boilers”.
And also Rete Imprese has struck, among other things, on the button of the incentives which - said the president Ivan Malavasi - have given unhoped-for results on the renewable energy front and just as many could derive from the efficiency front. “For this - he added - we want to underline the need to maintain the 55% benefit in our country. It is appropriate to extend the adoption of this mechanism to the European level as well”.
