To meet the challenges of the future, innovation and sustainability are key. In energy, one of the most important sectors of the green economy and one of those subject to the strongest pressure to combat climate change, this means renewable sources, energy saving, innovation and research. Italy is well placed – better than any other European country – to ride the wave of the green economy. And it will even raise the bar on the goals and international constraints to combat climate change and gain – our Foreign Minister, Paolo Gentiloni, is sure of this – a leading position in the forthcoming 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris.
Will we be going to Paris with our own proposals? Or with proposals coordinated with the international community? And, in the second case, which ones?
“We intend to reiterate the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% by 2030, with respect to the values of 1990. And we also intend to do everything possible to ensure that the highest possible number of countries adopts goals that can avert dramatic consequences. I’m not speaking only about the economy, I’m talking about the risk of war and migrations of truly biblical proportions. For us it’s necessary for the Paris meeting to establish a binding mechanism for periodic reviews of the commitments”.
The rush to renewables is fast, visible, and also expensive. Should we still be supporting it with substantial public aid? And in what way?
“In recent decades renewable energy has developed considerably and technologically mature renewables are now able to compete on the market. The creation of a single energy market in Europe, and the application of competitive mechanisms, are the best solutions to gradually change an approach based on incentivising renewable forms of energy. Renewables will increasingly need to be promoted through additional market mechanisms such as setting a CO2 price in the Emissions Trading framework”.
In the technologies for the green economy, Italy is well placed. According to many analysts, the country could turn them into an important business opportunity at the international level. How can this potential be encouraged and freed up?
“Our country is indeed at the cutting edge and that makes the ‘made in Italy’ name more competitive. According to the 6th Greenitaly Report produced by the Symbola Foundation and Unioncamere, since the start of the crisis more than one enterprise in four has placed its bets on green. These companies are operating in all sectors of our economy, with peaks of 32% in manufacturing. And they are the companies that innovate and export most. In the course of 2015, 59% of the demand for labour has been linked, directly or indirectly, to environmental jobs, with peaks of 67% in the planning and research and development business segments.
As the report points out, in various sectors Italy can boast a positive green spread, in terms not just of the consumption of energy and the raw materials used but also of emissions and waste produced per unit of product. And we’re leading the field in the recycling industry in Europe. If we consider the over 163 million tons of recyclable waste at the European level, Italy has recovered 25 million tons, the highest absolute value. So the potential for Italian green businesses to export is growing. Their considerable expertise and technological know-how is creating businesses opportunities which our diplomacy is supporting at all levels”.
In the strategy to reduce carbon use, will nuclear for civil uses have a future, in your opinion?
“That’s an open debate in many countries. Even if nuclear has become less competitive from an economic perspective. Italy has embarked on a new road and is aiming to combat climate change through renewables, thanks to sound know-how in the production of wind, solar and geothermal energy and the development of innovative technologies. For example, an extraordinary effort to achieve energy efficiency, for which incentives are, and continue to be, crucial.
It is no coincidence that in recent weeks the Guardian newspaper described ENEL as the planet’s “first truly green energy giant”. In the meantime, developing countries are seeking substantial financial commitments – or, more at a more basic level, aid – from the countries whose growth until now has been supported by huge levels of emissions that are upsetting climate patterns”.
A feasible option? In short, the richest countries can or must fund the “clean-up” of the countries that want to be able to grow like us?
“In the context of the UN Convention on Climate Change it was said that, although all countries are responsible for their greenhouse gas emissions, some are ‘historically responsible’, as they began their industrialisation process well ahead of others. This concept is changing, with some resisting the change, to one of ‘evolving responsibilities’, to take the new global socio-economic situation into account. A situation that is very different from 1992. The Kyoto Protocol envisaged commitments to reduce emissions only on the part of the industrialised countries.
Nowadays, we’re all required to undertake to reduce climate change. These commitments will in part be funded by the industrialised countries, which undertook, during the Cancun COP in 2010, to jointly mobilise 100 billion dollars by 2020. The question of how to structure climate financing is one of the key, and most sensitive, issues of the future agreement. We’re not discussing just how much and by whom, but also how to distribute financial resources between impact reduction projects and adaptation projects, which channels to use to manage these funds, and how to make the arrangements transparent”.
