Auto green, Meloni: “Italy does not retreat”
The prime minister, Meloni ahe reiterated on the eve of the EU Council the Italian position on the green car. “Why should one uncritically follow what others say – explained the prime minister – instead of trying to play his own game on a technological level? This is the challenge I’m trying to pose: on cars I think that all thechallenge on biofuels is a challenge that Italy can easily face because we are the vanguard there“. “The electric – he then added speaking to the Chamber – nwho is the panacea of all evils, for various reasons. It does not escape me how the fundamental components of the electric are in fact extracted with techniques that devastate the environment. And it does not escape me that those components are mainly produced in Chinese with coal-fired power plants“.
Meloni, taking up a concept expressed the day before in the Senate, warned of the “risk of moving from dependence on Russian gas to dependence on Chinese electricity”. “It doesn’t seem like a smart thing to me. – he concluded – I believe that Europe must work on its sovereignty over these technologies. It is the theme that I pose and on which I want to work”.
In these hours a difficult compromise is being sought in Brussels on the green car after the rejection of the plan put forward by the Commission which envisaged the transition in forced stages towards electric only with the ban, from 2035 on the sale of diesel and petrol cars. A regulation stopped at the last minute thanks to Italy’s halt, followed by Poland, Bulgaria, Germany and Austria. In the past few hours the Commission had elaborated a new text, immediately rejected by Rome and Berlin. The thumbs down of our government stems from the fact that, in addition to the electric, the new text also provided for the opening to E Fuel technology, but we to that linked to biofuels.
E-fuel and biofuels, a substantial difference
But why is it so important to specify the green light for biofuels in the text Meanwhile let’s see the differences which distinguish them from synthetic fuels and how they both aim to eliminate or reduce carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere.
The e-fuel are produced chemically combining hydrogen and carbon dioxide. Hydrogen is obtained by electrolysis from water and to do so you need a lot of electricity and a lot of water. For synthetic fuels to be truly carbon neutral, this electricity must come from renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, geothermal, hydro or tidal energy.
I biofuelsas bioethanol and biodiesel come instead produced from biomass, i.e. from the waste of organic matter generated by plants and animals. For the production of biomass, waste from the agri-food industry, urban organic waste, green branches from agricultural and forestry activities, firewood residues and more are used. Biofuels are “virtually” carbon neutral because, used to fuel heat engines, they develop the carbon dioxide already present in the starting biomass, which in turn is captured from the atmosphere and fixed in the organic matter by plants through photosynthesis.
Biofuels and Italy
In Italy it isEni to lead research on the production of advanced or second generation biofuels, in particular with the project Waste to Fuel which obtains biofuels from food waste through a technology that obtains bio-oil from the organic fraction of domestic waste. Approximately 30 million tons are harvested in Italy every year of waste. Of these, 18 million tons are correctly differentiated and, within these, about 7 million tons are of FORSU (organic fraction of municipal solid waste). By promoting a greater and more correct differentiation of kitchen waste, 10 million tons of Forsu could be reached every year. This is currently used above all to produce compost for agriculture and biogas.
By combining a good differentiated collection with a diffusion of Waste to Fuel plants, throughout the national territory, we could ideally obtain about one billion liters of bio-oil, equivalent to about 6 million barrels of crude oil per year. It would be like discovering a small deposit without having to drill wells and, above all, without emitting further CO2 into the environment. With a single action we could make a major contribution to the country’s energy security and at the same time reduce the amount of waste and greenhouse gas emissions. But another Eni patented technology is also the system Ecofining which transforms raw materials of biological origin into high quality biofuels.
In short, Italy is already ready to reach zero emissions without having to resort only to the transition to electricity, a technology which among other things poses problems of super pollution at source (raw materials for batteries) and disposal. Not only that: on the electric car it is the Chinese who have a strong competitive advantage, so much so that European car manufacturers and trade unions have started the alarm on almost a million jobs at risk.