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“The 2050 goal is not unreachable if we have a well-studied plan. To reach it, however, we must make some important decisions.”

Telos: It has been over two years now since you were appointed Minister of the Environment and Energy Security. Are you satisfied with your work and the point Italy has reached on its path to sustainability?

Gilberto Pichetto Fratin: I arrived at the MASE during a tough period when the country -and the majority of Europe- had to rethink its energy policy in just a few months. We had just come from a summer when gas prices had exceeded 340 euros per Megawatt hour. A time of great tension and uncertainty, generated by the war in Ukraine.
And then there were the environmental policies brought on by the intensification -from the north to the south- of extreme atmospheric events and the consequent need to take immediately action to mitigate and adapt to climate changes. I decided -along with the government- to adopt a new, pragmatic approach for Italy, abandoning any form of “ideological environmentalism.”
Now, two years later, the results are encouraging. We have strengthened our country’s energy security through supply diversification policies. We have updated the National Action Plan for Climate Change (NAPCC)) and the National Plan for Energy and Climate (NPEC).
Our country is now aware that it needs to change direction and aim for a more sustainable future, not just in terms of the environment but also economically and socially. The course we are following gives me hope, and I can safely say that we are on the right path. However, we cannot stop if we want to reach our 2030 and 2050 de-carbonisation goals.

More policies and less ideology. Is that the way to a true ecological transition?

Yes, absolutely. Environmental issues, more than any others, are always exposed to excessive ideological risk. The goals set for 2050 are not utopian if you are concrete and if these same environmental choices are made while taking into account the local socio-economic situation. On several occasions, this attitude has caused us to clash with the previous European Commission, especially under Timmermans, on this issue.Consider the ban on internal combustion engines laid out for 2035: here Europe has gone off the rails ideologically. We don’t think banning internal combustion engines is the only way to reach zero emissions and believe that it will have considerable impact on the industry of a country like Italy, which is a leader in the automobile industry. We saw that all the countries in Europe panicked over this decision, and now Europe is finally ready to acknowledge the mistake made in 2019. We didn’t say no to BEV, we said no to a monoculture of BEV. If the goal is indeed the result and not the means of reaching it, we must acknowledge that there are valid alternatives that can be considered, like engines that run on biofuel. Then, for example, I voted against the European Green Homes Directive aiming for the energy efficiency of buildings by 2050. You want to know why? Domestic heating, mobility, industry and agriculture: these are the main global polluters. We didn’t dispute Europe’s net zero by 2050 goal, we disputed the way of achieving it, which can’t be the same for all the countries in Europe. Italy’s real estate assets have neither the same features nor the same problems as those of France or Finland. The Italian peninsula has 50,000 villages, and three quarters of the buildings are more than seventy years old. More than eighty percent of families are homeowners. In Italy there are 31 million buildings, 21 million of which are over class D. Even without considering the historic buildings, there would still be millions of buildings that need to be made more efficient. Luckily, also thanks to our objections, the directive was gradually amended. Now we are working on an achievable, twenty-year plan, one that is realistic mainly at the fiscal level, to enable families to do the works required on their homes, while maintaining, I repeat, an economic and social balance as well.

What do you think of the goal of reaching zero emissions by 2050? Are you optimistic or pessimistic?

Absolutely optimistic. The 2050 goal is not unreachable if we have a well-studied plan. To reach it, however, we must make some important decisions. By 2030 two-thirds of our energy will come from renewable sources. Today we are at only one-third while the rest comes from fossil fuels. And the percentage of energy from renewable sources will continue to increase. By the end of this year, we will have stopped using carbon, at least on the continent. Then we are investing in all the other alternative sources: from hydrogen to new-generation nuclear power. Yes, nuclear power! Renewable energy does not ensure the continuity our country needs to guarantee its energy security, especially if our energy needs continue to grow like we have been seeing in recent years and that will continue to grow. Today we consume 310 Terawatt hours of energy a year and analysts estimate that by 2050 energy consumption will have doubled. The continuity we need can only be guaranteed by nuclear power. And it is important to point out that nuclear power today is not the same as the Chernobyl one. Italy may have stopped using nuclear power almost forty years ago, but it has maintained a very high level of knowledge and skill in this area. This does not mean we want to return to Italy of the massive, old-generation nuclear power plants. Instead, we want to evaluate new, safe, next-generation, sustainable nuclear technologies.

“To resolve the big global questions, we have to put the environment at the centre of our economic choices.” Could you give us some concrete examples to support this important statement of yours?

To answer the big, global questions, it is essential that we integrate the environment into our economic choices, because this is the only way we can guarantee long-term sustainable development. One concrete example is the energy transition: by investing in renewable energy like wind, solar and hydroelectric power, we not only reduce CO2 emissions, we create new economic opportunities and jobs, making our energy system more secure and resilient.
Or we can look to the circular economy, which aims to reduce resource waste by fostering the recycling and reuse of materials. This approach not only protects the environment, it can also reduce production costs. An economic approach with decisions centred on the environment and sustainability is not only possible, it is necessary to successfully tackle future global challenges.

Marco Sonsini