The mayor of Rome, Roberto Gualtieri, wants a waste-to-energy plant for Rome by the Jubilee of 2025 or in any case by the end of the syndication of 2026. If the facts follow the promises, it is “an historic turning point”, as defined by Gualtieri himself. And he is absolutely right. For at least two reasons: one practical and one political, one environmental and local and one wholly national.
A waste-to-energy plant against the waste emergency: here's what can change
Who does not know what the degradation of the city of Great Beauty is the number one emergency in the capital, covered in trash? The Romans know it very well and the tourists know it. Seeing a unique city in the world often reduced to an open sewer in homage to the worst populism hurts the heart. But if you don't have the disposal facilitiesHow do you manage waste? You have to spend tons of money, which the taxpayers pay, to transport them to other regions. It is not a problem that arises in Rome today, but the emergency has worsened to the point of reaching unsustainable levels under the Giunta Raggi, one of the worst administrations - together with that of Alemanno - in the capital.
Now Gualtieri promises a turning point with the construction of the second largest waste-to-energy plant in Italy, a 600-ton plant which should be entrusted to Ama and Acea. "That of waste - claims the mayor of the Democratic Party - is the most complex legacy that we have found ourselves managing: the current structure of the waste cycle of Rome capital lives in a dimension of chronic and latent emergency and the absence of adequate and autonomous plant equipment is the real vulnerability that today prevents the city from managing the waste problem”. The future waste-to-energy plant will allow reduce CO44 emissions by 2%, to cover the electricity needs of 150 Roman families and reduce the Tari by 20%. Is environmentalism this or that of those who - like the Five Stars but also like the more populist wing of the Democratic Party - have always said No to new plants in Rome?
Gualtieri's breakthrough is a challenge to the taboos of the Five Stars and part of the Democratic Party
Gualtieri's turning point has not only a local and environmental value but has a national dimension. It is no coincidence that he immediately received the commendation of the secretary of the Democratic Party, Enrico Letta, and only after many hours and gritted teeth the endorsement of the Governor of Lazio, Nicola Zingaretti, which - let's not forget - governs together with the Five Stars and has often covered up the environmental immobility of the grillini, so much so that its regional plan does not provide for a waste-to-energy plant but only a landfill.
But, predictably, it is above all the Five Stars who make the barricades against the waste-to-energy plant: "The waste plan of the Lazio Region - the grillina councilor arises for the ecological transition, Roberta Lombardi (Remember her streaming from March 2013 together with Vito Crimi who mocked the then secretary of the Democratic Party, Pierluigi Bersani ?) - not provides for the installation of new incinerators and therefore the new plant (proposed by Gualtieri) cannot be done and will never have our support”.
Gualtieri and Letta know perfectly well that waste-to-energy plants are a taboo for the Five Stars and having decided to go ahead to solve the capital's waste crisis once and for all is a positive and confirmatory statement doubts about the sustainability of the alliance between Pd and Cinque Stelle, also aggravated by the troubles that former Prime Minister Conte got himself into both with the American secret services and with the Russian intervention in our hospitals in the worst times of Covid. Sooner or later Zingaretti too, who as secretary of the Democratic Party thought that Conte was “the tallest point of reference for progressives Italians” will have to come to terms with it. Or at least hopefully.
