Minister Pichetto at Confindustria

The Minister at the Confindustria Energia conference: “Environmental protection as a consequence of our energy choices”

Rome, 17 January– ‘Energy dependence on foreign countries is the handbrake on our country’s growth’. Thus the Minister for the Environment and Energy Security Gilberto Pichetto, speaking at the Confindustria Energia conference ‘Energy infrastructures for a safe and sustainable transition’. ‘Today,’ Pichetto explained, ‘the international reference framework has changed and there is a political government that wants to seriously address the issue of Italy’s energy dependence. We absolutely cannot delay a minute in security of supply: environmental protection is a consequence of our energy choices.”

“The ecological transition is a path and energy infrastructures are fundamental stages of it. “Ours, clarified the Environment Minister, is a vision of an energy system with many interconnected sources, with a plurality of suppliers, never depending on just one. The challenge is diffuse generation: from the supply centre to a ramification of the system. We want to build our centrality, which means satisfying Italian needs, but also becoming an energy hub in Europe, in line with the environmental and climate objectives that Italy has signed up to.”

Minister Pichetto recalled the decisions taken in recent months in this regard ‘on regasifiers, on simplification, on mining, which for a long time have been ideologically conditioned, on new forms of energy production such as hydrogen and the development of realities such as geothermal energy, which with modern technology can have a space not only localised in certain parts of Italy.” “We must also overcome,” the minister explained, “the knots we have on renewables, such as the discontinuity in storage. On this, technology must come to our aid, as must research and the appropriate supply of raw materials.”

Among the strategic infrastructures, Pichetto highlighted the importance of the new Tunisia-Italy power line, the Adriatic backbone and the doubling of the TAP. “Blocking it,” he recalled, “would lead us to a 15% reduction in supply, to losing our centrality in the Mediterranean. “The first step is to use the PNRR funds,” the minister concluded, recalling the advances on the ‘smart grid’, for 4,000 kilometres of modern and resilient networks, for the development of hydrogen.”

17.01.2023 https://www.mite.gov.it/comunicati/energia-pichetto-dipendenza-dall-estero-e-freno-mano-dell-italia