Does Cingolani want to give gas to Italy?
The Minister of Ecological Transition, Roberto Cingolani, has proposed the resumption of the exploitation of Italian gas fields to mitigate the crisis in energy prices. Meanwhile, coal-fired power plants …
In an interview with Messaggero , the Minister of Ecological Transition Roberto Cingolani said that the new increase in electricity and gas bills in the first quarter of 2022 is also the fault of an "implosive policy" that has led Italy to give up production natural gas domestic to rely more and more on purchases from abroad. “We import everything”, explained Cingolani, “and therefore we are vulnerable” to the very high gas prices on the European market.
THE "WRONG CHOICES OF THE PAST"
The minister maintains that the current situation of international energy crisis is particularly serious for our country due to the “wrong choices of the past. We have adopted an implosive policy: in 2000 we produced 20 billion cubic meters of gas, today we produce only 4.5, against a consumption of 72 billion cubic meters ".
“We decided it was better to buy gas abroad instead of using our own,” he added.
Italy has national methane deposits, the main component of natural gas, albeit modest. The reserves – according to the official numbers contained in the Plan for the sustainable energy transition of suitable areas, or PiTESAI – amount to approximately 90 billion cubic meters, mainly concentrated in the Po Valley, the Adriatic Sea and Basilicata.
However, these reserves have been at a standstill for years, not exploited, due to the political uncertainty that discourages investments. Estimates say that the cost of extracting Italian methane is about 5 cents per cubic meter. On the other hand, the gas that Italy imports from abroad (mainly from Russia and Algeria) has an average price of 50-70 cents.
THE TRACK PLAN ON GAS
The energy price crisis has many causes , and is unlikely to be resolved soon : first of all it concerns gas, which is also the material often used to generate electricity and which has a very significant weight – 40 per cent – in the Italian mix.
Cingolani defends the need to "upgrade renewables as quickly as possible", in line with the European Union's objectives for decarbonisation. But it is impossible to install gigawatts of wind and solar capacity in no time. In the short term, "in the next 12-18 months we must also move in other directions", says the minister. “Like that of increasing national gas production with fields already open”. That is, to reactivate operations in the reserves whose exploitation had already begun.
“We could increase by a not exaggerated amount. Maybe double the current 4 billion cubic meters ”currently produced in our area: therefore, reaching 8-9 billion, in any case not much compared to consumption levels.
COMPARISON WITH EUROPE
The European Union has set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the medium (-55 per cent compared to 1990 values in 2030) and in the long term (net zeroing). But it left the responsibility for organizing their energy mixes themselves, based on their national conditions, to member states. Gas is a fossil fuel, but it is also less emissive than oil and, above all, coal. It is considered a potentially useful source in the transition phase towards carbon neutrality to give stability to an electricity grid that will be increasingly dominated by intermittent renewables, waiting for storage technologies (such as batteries) to improve in efficiency and do less. expensive.
Cingolani told Messaggero that "in January there should be an EU inter-ministerial on energy". A summit, that is, between the representatives of the member countries in which energy policies will be discussed: at the last meeting, a few days ago, nothing was decided : there was no agreement both on possible changes to the CO2 quota market and on the inclusion of gas and nuclear power among the sources classified as "green".
ITALY RESTART COAL
The high price of gas – above 180 euros per megawatt hour – has led Terna, the company that manages the Italian electricity transmission networks, to request the temporary reactivation of the coal plants in La Spezia (Enel) and Monfalcone (A2A ): Despite higher emission levels, coal is a cheaper source than gas at this stage.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/roberto-cingolani-gas-sfruttamento-giacimenti-italia/ on Wed, 22 Dec 2021 11:22:46 +0000.