It is an energy bill that has jumped from 700 million euros pre-Covid to over 4 billion euros estimated this year, the new emergency with which the Via Emilia industry is measured. An unsustainable cost for a manufacturing region that wants to continue to compete with the major industrial areas of the world and to drive the country’s recovery, thanks to a record export capacity (+ 12.5% in 2021) and growth rates well above the average. national and European (+ 6.9% GDP in 2021, a rebound that has already made it possible to recover 75% of the ground lost in the pandemic, and + 4.1% the forecast for 2022). The meeting wanted by the president of Confindustria Emilia-Romagna, Pietro Ferrari, starts from the energy node to turn the spotlight on the trajectory that the economy and society of the region are following, “with the awareness that it is time to move from emergency to prudence and that one cannot be a manufacturing region (and nation) without a good degree of energy autonomy. We must all take a step back, even on principles considered untouchable ».
83% of the energy comes from gas
From Confindustria Emilia-Romagna comes a resounding yes to the drills to go back to fishing for all the natural gas possible on the mainland and in the Adriatic, yes to biomethane through supply chain agreements (with agreed prices and certificates of origin, in ceramics and food in primis ) and yes to regasifiers to create an energy mix that for now appears to be a utopia. Because if the gas taps are closed, industry shuts down today: gas covers 83% of the energy needs of Emilia-Romagna companies (65% of electricity consumption and 95% of thermal ones), while renewable sources they weigh 30% as installed power but only 15% as the actual contribution of energy produced in the region, due to the scarcity of storage systems and smart grids (essential to compensate for the up & down of sunlight, wind, water resources).
Prices fivefold
It is a pity that Italy imports 94% of gas and is at the mercy of prices that have increased fivefold since last May with no power to intervene (except through buffer subsidies, an additional debt that does not solve the problem) and that Emilia-Romagna is stopped for years in terms of increased energy production from renewable sources, plastered by anachronistic regulations and planning. The Emilia-Romagna community is used to rolling up their sleeves in the face of emergencies and complaining little, “and it is true that at the regional level, little can be done but that little must be done quickly”, is the reprimand that Ferrari addresses to the council. Bonaccini, who is only now starting to move on the installation of panels in quarries and abandoned industrial areas. And he asks us to understand “what design is, that is the trajectory that this region wants to have, because if it wants to remain manufacturing (today the industry contributes over 25% of added value, against 16.5% nationally, ed) it must to put oneself in a position to have energy costs comparable to those of other large industrial areas ».
The noose of the regional Pact for work and climate
The Pact for work and climate signed by all the economic, social and institutional forces of the region, which sets the goal of reaching 100% of energy from renewable sources in 2035, against the current 15%, “is a commitment excessively complicated, I have never hidden it even if I was convinced by my fellow entrepreneurs to sign it – admits the number one in via Barberia – but to reach this goal, capital and the willingness of the Region to activate all the available tools are needed. and today it is not. And it is unthinkable to increase GDP by cutting energy consumption by 40% ». Yet there are no new biomethane projects, because almost all the applications submitted in recent years have not been successful; the Nimby logic applies to regasifiers; the average time allowed to put a plant from renewable sources into production is 109 months, almost nine years (according to a national study by Confindustria).
The restoration of gas extraction platforms
The fastest intervention to recover some energy self-production remains the restoration of the gas extraction platforms (today just 4 billion cubic meters are extracted, compared to over 20 at the beginning of the millennium, and cover just 4% of national needs) , but it still takes 12 to 18 months for reactivation and 1.2 billion euros of investments.