On the one hand, there is Italy that tries to invest in the great works that can modernize the country. On the other hand, there is a long trail of “great unfinished” infrastructures in the middle that have been waiting to be completed for too many years, often decades. And in the meantime they also risk becoming obsolete. The very strong injection of liquidity represented by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, the NRP presented by the Draghi government and welcomed by Brussels, which will have to finance it through the resources of the Next Generation Eu, fits into this context. The third appointment of “Alphabet of the Future” will be organized around these themes, the tour organized by La Stampa with GNN newspapers dedicated to the great challenges that await us. Tomorrow the appointment dedicated to infrastructures is in Padua. The event will be streamed online.
Net of the Pnrr, today in Italy there are projects and construction sites for over 300 billion and investment spending is constantly increasing, obviously excluding the parenthesis of last year’s lockdown. But a first problem is the construction times: according to the latest Censis report for the country’s infrastructural works, the overall implementation time is on average 4 years and 5 months, the design phase has average durations varying between 2 and 6 years, the award phase of the works varies between 5 and 20 months, the average execution times vary between 5 months and almost 8 years. To date, the total cost of the strategic and priority infrastructures programmed amounts to 305 billion euros. Of these, 262, approximately 86%, refer to priority infrastructures. The need for funds in this field for the next few years therefore goes far beyond the Recovery Plan itself. In addition, the report also underlines the weight of the public in financing: October 2019, out of an amount of available resources of 199 billion, the public contribution represented 78% (155 billion) and the private one 22%, a sign of an advance by the state. in the financing of major works.
Investments that mainly focus on railways and ports: against total resources of 191.5 billion, approximately 24.77 billion are destined for investments in the railway network and in particular for projects for the completion of the main high-speed railway axes and high capacity, to the integration between these and the regional railway network and to the safety of the entire railway network. As regards the development of the port system, on the other hand, the projects concern interventions aimed at guaranteeing intermodality with the major European communication lines, developing links with oceanic and inter-Mediterranean traffic, to reduce emissions harmful to the climate. The investments related to this component will allow an increase in the volumes of passengers (which in 2019 amounted to 56 million, of which 12 million from cruise ships) and freight (479 million tons in 2019), resulting in a substantial reduction of troad gust.
But a fundamental problem of the country are the works that have jammed and remain unfinished. Sometimes companies fail, others run out of funds, often it is the appeals of companies that have lost the tender or violations of environmental regulations to block construction sites. Among the most striking cases, the A12, the Autostrada Tirrenica, which was to connect Genoa with Rome and which has been waiting for decades to be completed. Or the A33 Asti-Cuneo, which has been waiting for the 9.5 kilometers to be completed for 30 years. Between commissioners, new procedures and funds of the NRP many of these works will be unlocked. 20 construction sites are expected to open in 2021, to which 50 will be added in 2022 and a further 37 in 2023. The employment impact of rail and road works alone can be estimated at over 68,000 average annual work units over the next ten years , with a growing profile until 2025, the year in which a direct impact on employment of over 100,000 work units is estimated.
But when it comes to infrastructure, other types of networks must also be considered. A crucial point are the electricity distribution infrastructures which in the future will have to be able to manage a radically different generation system and energy flows distributed by many plants. Another point concerns the promotion of hydrogen production and distribution. A final challenge concerns the development of mobility based on electric vehicles. Approximately 6 million electric vehicles are expected by 2030 for which 31,500 public fast charging points are estimated to be required. The Pnrr aims to develop 7,500 fast charging points on the motorway and 13,755 in urban centers, as well as 100 experimental charging stations with energy storage technologies.