Tabarelli (Nomisma) at the top of the former Ilva: Prodi’s hands on energy?
“The Minister of Business and Made in Italy Adolfo Urso signed the decree appointing Professor Giovanni Fiori, expert in corporate governance and internal auditing, and Professor Davide Tabarelli, president of NE Nomisma Energia and expert in environmental issues”. This is the meager press release which announced the appointment of Davide Tabarelli as “extraordinary director” of the former Ilva of Taranto which is now called “Acciaierie d’Italia”. Tabarelli became famous some time ago, in the times of high bills, when he managed to chase away Covid-stars of the caliber of Matteo Bassetti or Massimo Galli from the television Olympus.
Born in Modena in 1960, he founded in 2006 Nomisma Energy after joining Nomisma in 1986, founded in turn by Romano Prodi. Graduated in Economics, he talks a lot about Energy, but he doesn’t understand much about it from a technical point of view, not being a physicist. He was responsible for approximately 90 studies on energy and environmental issues. He was a consultant to the Ministry of Industry from January 1995 to May 1996. Responsible for assistance to the Ministry of the Environment on the subject of climate change with former minister Corrado Clini. He was a member of ministerial commissions for energy policy in 2003 and 2005 and has always visited ministries for consultancy, work or “advice”. During the high bills he terrified Italians with catastrophic predictions which fortunately did not come true but which certainly did not do the recently installed centre-right government any good.
Over the years he has been particularly able to fit into the Ministry of the Environment where he dealt with the Kyoto Protocol, but he has always been critical, if not hostile, to renewable sources and this despite the fact that he passes for a left-wing environmentalist who has sat at many tables on energy already at the time of the Union. President of Nomisma Energia, based in Bologna, has always orbited, ideologically and professionally, in the Romano Prodi area, one of the founders of Nomisma and leader of the centre-left, twice prime minister and minister. He collaborated for a long time as a consultant with the Ministry of the Environment at the time of Corrado Clini, first manager and then minister, dealing as mentioned with renewable sources within the Kyoto Protocol.
That Tabarelli was working for (his) future can be discovered from what he thought about Enrico Letta, former prime minister of the center-left and his old mentor. In fact, this is how he expressed himself in 2022: “Enrico Letta he was Minister of Industry in the early 2000s. He signed the first gas directives. But after 22 years I see him as paying little attention to industrial issues. From here also arises the ‘European distraction’ expressed by von der Leyen and Timmermans. Not to mention the environmentalists in government in Germany.” But how? Tabarelli was for years part of the Arel environmentalist think-tank led by the current secretary of the Democratic Party Enrico Letta and founded by his teacher Beniamino Andreatta and does he speak like this? In short, now the former Ilva also has Romano Prodi’s man in its command deck.