The recipe for reducing bills cannot be separated from massive investments in renewables. “If we really want to take a step forward and give a concrete answer to the problems of expensive energy and energy security, trying to make ourselves independent from gas, we need a massive program of investments in renewables and storage: we cannot procrastinate any further”. Thus the CEO of Terna, Stefano Donnarummaintervening all’Italian Energy Summit organized by Sole 24 Ore.
In addition to investing 18 billion euros over the next ten years to develop the grid and enable renewable sources, Terna highlights the need to promote the development of storage capacity of large size, essential for accumulating large volumes of energy in the central hours of the day, when photovoltaic production is structurally overabundant, to return it especially in the evening and at night. “To achieve the accumulations envisaged by the PNIEC by 2030, a total investment necessary of about 15 billion euros can be estimated, which will bring a double benefit: on the one hand, it will have a positive impact on GDP equal to over 40 billion euros; on the other hand, thanks to the accumulations, it will be possible to feed into the grid about 16 terawatt hours per year of renewable energy that would otherwise be “cut” and replaced by gas production, with an additional cost of over 2 billion euros per year. In the last ten years, however, investments in this sector have been insufficient ”, remarked Donnarumma.
“If today the price of electricity were already dependent only on the industrial cost of renewable sources and not – as happens today – anchored to the cost of gas production, the reference price of the energy component of the last quarter bill would be lower than almost 90% ”, concluded Donnarumma.