Is it true that greenhouse gases are at an all-time high?
Are incentives helpful?
And the famous zero net address goals, are they achievable for Italy?
In recent years, the global community has set a very ambitious agenda with a clear goal of zero CO2 impact by 2050.
Within this framework, Europe has defined a total fadeout of internal combustion vehicles to 2035.
Given also the rather complex context in which the sustainability challenge fits (inflation, war in Ukraine, and permacrisis, to name but a few of the aggravating elements), one wonders: where are we today? And most importantly: are the net-zero address goals really achievable?
Especially for our country, the answer depends.
Meanwhile, the global predictions coming to us from such authoritative sources as the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are certainly not the best.
Rising temperatures continue as weather tightens. Greenhouse gases at historic highs
Derived mainly from fossil combustion, human-induced temperature rise is increasing at a rate of more than 0.2 C per decade.
A recent study conducted by the University of Leeds,“Greenhousegas emissions at ‘an all-time high‘ ,” found that greenhouse gas emissions are“at an all-time high,” with“Human activity resulting in the release of the equivalent of 54 (+/-5.3) gigatonnes (or billion metric tons) of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere on average each year over the past decade (2012-2021).”
Piers Forster himself coordinator of the Indicators of Global Climate Change project and director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures in Leeds, recently said,“Time is no longer on our side, we need to be quick in the face of climate change and change policies and approaches.”
Will some of the strategic choices driving the transition be made?
- Policies
- Financial
- Media
What does policy do for ecological transition?
The simplification of regulations and the consequent streamlining of practices that enable the implementation of green-oriented works is certainly one of the major issues related to the development of our country’s ecological transition.
It is paradoxical how, in Italy, legislation and policy are not a facilitating and reformist means of achieving meaningful results toward Fit For 55 goals and commitments to Europe, but instead become its main obstacle.
A case in point, in this regard, concerns the status of renewable installations, which, in Italy, is as unencouraged as it is unbalanced between formalized project requests and de facto implemented projects. Few, the latter, precisely because of intrusive and not at all dynamic regulations.
ReadingLegambiente ‘s Report 2023 : “Checkmate for Renewables,” we come across important numbers: out of 303 GW of applications received, as many as 255 are in the very early stages of the grid connection process related to the General Minimum Technical Solution (STMG); while only 4.58 GW or 1.5 percent of the total applications, have reached the formulation of the Detailed Minimum Technical Solution (STMD).
According to the in-depth study Renewable Municipalities 2023, it is interesting to note that GW of new installations are spread across the vast majority of municipalities, 7,317 in 2022. This is a slow growth that, at the end of 2022, involves a total of 7,901 Italian municipalities-where there is at least one renewable power plant.
Of these, 3,535, or 45 percent of the total, those that can theoretically be called 100% Electric Renewable Municipalities.
Numbers that are certainly significant, but which show a sharp slowdown compared to a few years ago. We are talking about an overall increase of only 42 municipalities compared to 2020, which is significantly less than in the three-year period 2017/2019 when the growth had been as many as 240 municipalities.
In general, what Legambiente denounces in the latest Reports, is a blockade to clean technologies that starts from afar with very low percentage increases from 2011, when in a single year as much as 11 GW of new capacity was built making an increase, compared to 2010, of 34 percent.
If we had continued with this trend, we would have ended up with 121 GW of power from renewable sources today. Twice as much as the current installed fleet, coming to cover a large part of our country’s electricity consumption.
Are government incentives useful in Italy?
The 2021-2022 biennium was marked by the presence of incentive packages to support the green transition. Regarding the area that concerns us most, i.e., mobility and the transition to electric, the initiatives touched on:
- Bonuses for new car purchases;
- Incentives and bonuses for the purchase and installation of home/private charging points (wallboxes)
- and, of course, the charging of vehicles on the road with the help of NRP funds.
Specifically, regarding our core, we ask: What effect has the incentive had on the number of private charging point installations?
The on-year trend photographed by Smart Mobility Report POLIMI – Energy & Strategy 22 remained steadily growth-oriented, touching peaks of +200% and +160% in the years 2020 and 2021.
From this we can infer that:
- it is undeniable that these results are mainly the result of the incentive mechanisms, which were active during that time;
- incentives support the increase of private charging points, which, with their increase, in turn support the achievement of EU targets by enhancing access to charging.
At the turn of 2022 to 2023, however, we saw an abrupt slowdown in the development of the private charging network. This is because announcing and then blocking an incentive, as happened with the 40 million earmarked for the purchase and installation of private-use charging stations, can only halt the positive trend.
Yet freeing up these resources, by deliberating the implementing decrees that make them usable, would mean being able to add about 25,000 private charging points to the Italian network.
Thus, the role of well-designed and well-implemented incentives could still be decisive in achieving sustainable goals, but does it not depend, too, on policy choices?
Impossible benchmark with the U.S. closes doors to Europe on competitiveness
When talking about measures and policy choices aimed at competitively developing electrification, it is impossible not to mention theIRA. The mammoth act signed almost a year ago by U.S. President Biden that, on the subject of mobility and transition to electric, makes explicit a clear and polarizing strategy: it subordinates BEV incentives to the local origin of production and raw materials.
Operation fortified by its concomitance with other instances. One among them the proposed new EPA standards, which stipulate that–by 2032–67 percent of cars sold must necessarily be electric.
Unfortunately, so far we cannot say that similarly strategic measures have been implemented in Europe. At least not such as to overcome the empasse, to which we are sadly becoming accustomed, that separates us from the mere setting of goals to their actual achievement.
Decisive financial choices, those that benefit the fossil fuel are never lacking
Yet resources and initiatives are not lacking and capital is moving. Unfortunately, not always in support of zero net address projects. Witness those financial choices that, as anticipated, contribute to the achievement of zero-impact goals. The report “Banking on Climate Chaos – fossil fuel finance.“, for example, speaks of a staggering figure: $5.5 trillion over 7 years allocated to the fossil sector by major banks around the world, including Italy.
A news story that does not find much space in the headlines, certainly not as much as the media reserves for criticism of full electric mobility.
Media choices to be “handled with care”
The “war on electric,” which now seems to be underway by the Italian media, not only pulls the mask down on an uncommon culture in the industry, but significantly disorients public opinion and consumption.
When the question is asked, “Why electric?”
When the answer that arises is “To facilitate the Chinese.”
When the proposed alternative solution falls on “E-fuel and Biofuel,” then it is clear how and how much misinformation activity has produced tangible results.
E-fuel and Biofuel, in fact, not only do not ensure a zero-emission impact, because they require a highly energy-intensive process to be produced (E-fuel) or, as they burn, they release CO2 (Biofuel). Above all, these two dreaded solutions, are not in a state of advancement and maturity to be considered viable within the timeframe defined by the net zero goals. Which, on the other hand, the electric car is, which is a technology:
- with great room for improvement, unlike hydrocarbons, Efuel and biofuels;
- With great scope for development;
- has the least environmental impact if it is powered by electricity from renewable sources, and in the plans this should happen by 2035;
- more energy efficient.
To conclude
It is on the strategic choices and their implementation that the success, thus the achievement, of net-zero targets depends. They represent not only the framework in which change occurs, necessary for the realization of a net-zero perspective, but the fertile ground that ensures its development (or not).
In general, however, it would be best to distance ourselves from viewing these goals as an end goal as much as a beginning.
A new beginning in which the common interest and of the Planet are placed at the center, ousting the relevant position of individual interests that still too often focus resources and the future on them.
