Today was Earth Day. Day in which the UN re-launched the environmental alarm (here is the IPCC 2023 climate report) with a message from the Secretary General Antonio Guterres which begins like this: “Humanity is behaving like a delinquent child of Mother Earth“. But at Corriere they have a Plan B
Everyone celebrated Mother Earth as they saw fit. He did it too Corriere della Sera publishing two interventions. The former director’s first Ferruccio De Bortoli at the opening of the weekly magazine L’Economia; the title is: “The blocked transition – Record petrol prices“. The second from the all-round columnist Federico Rampini who titles his OrienteOccident column “Electric cars, chips, energy: three hotbeds of future crises“.
The transition according to De Bortoli: more petrol refineries
Neither of them goes so far as to deny that something must be done. Nor that the energy transition is inevitable. God forbid, on Earth Day
For both, however, it must be done another way. Which? For De Bortoli, blocking the decommissioning of the refineries and restarting oil processing at full speed. Otherwise we will have to import the petrol and it will cost us an arm and a leg. So, Enough “with hypocrisies». «Good intentions are not enough. Despite massive commitments to renewable sources, we have never consumed so many fossils as in recent times. In Italy, oil has once again become the main source of energy in 2023, surpassing gas. Not to mention the coal».
But the ENEA report on Italian energy consumption 2023 does not say this. He says that “Italian primary energy consumption in 2023 is estimated at approximately 157 Mtoe (millions of tonnes of oil equivalent), then 2.5% reduction compared to 2022, lowest since 1987 (with the exception of 2020), approximately 10 Mtoe less than the average of the last 10 years (-6%)“.
And he explains that “in terms of sources, the decline in primary energy consumption is the result of natural gas contractions (-5.6 Mtoe), coal (-2.2 Mtoe) e petrolium (-1 Mtoe), only partially offset by greater energy production from renewable sources (+3.3 Mtoe) and from greater electricity imports (+1.8 Mtoe)” .
Here are two summary graphs:
So the answer to the question posed by De Bortoli at the end («Will we pay dearly for gasoline refined by others?”) yes, but only if we continue to travel with petrol cars. In other words, we will pay dearly for the transition… if we don’t make it.
Rampini: goodbye ban 2035 “helping elections” (in Europe and the USA)
After all, and here De Bortoli aligns himself with Rampini, a world powered by clean energy is an unachievable dream. A hypocrisy, an ideological quirk on the verge of being exposed and crushed. «A slowdown in the transition to green energy is considered probable, if not certain – writes de Bortoli -. Just think of the European Green Deal which was practically orphaned. No major political force claims him during the electoral campaign for fear of losing consensus. In the United States the trend is similar.”
Even grappling hooks he is pleased: «Elections helping, the obligation to abandon combustion engines by 2035 will be subject to reviews on both sides of the Atlantic».
In fact, for Rampini the electric car «it’s already sunset» (read the 2023 sales data here: +35% in the world). And the reasons «are known: fromcost inefficiencyto thetrue environmental impact». We won’t dwell further on the cars, as we already have them replicated herein Vaielettrico replies.
A bit of realism: hydrogen, CO2 capture, shielded solar rays
What’s left of the transition in the Courier-thought? In addition to petrol refineries, for De Bortoli biofuels and nuclear power (of a new generation to be precise). Hybrid cars, green hydrogen for cars and trucks, the «carbon capture technology» (it would be carbon, but that’s it) the «shielding against solar rays» according to Rampini.
In short, a mix of solutions realistic, simple and handy; who knows why again confined to laboratories and in a few experimental plants. But Rampini has the answer: they are blocked «fromhostility from radical environmentalists (they hate them because they are prejudiced against anything that can save economic development)».
So let’s finish with i impossible dreams. Like the electric carswhich are already circulating by the millions around the world (14.2 million sold last year alone).
Or theenergy from the sun, wind and water which have already allowed countries such as Spain, Portugal, Austria and Norway to free themselves from hydrocarbons by 80-90%. For Rampini «the world of energy seems about to take very different paths from that Wind-solar paradise which was dreamed of a few years ago.”
Electric cars and wind-solar paradises? Poor deluded people
Yet the IEA (International Energy Agency) report Renewables 2023 tells us that in 2023, renewable energy has caught up almost 510 GW in the world, with a 50% increase compared to the previous year. This would be it blocked transition by De Bortoli?
And he read, the former director of Corriere and Sole 24 Ore, the final document of COP 28 in Dubaiwhich he defines as “a semi-flop“, while everyone hailed it as “historic”? It commits the 198 countries belonging to the UN, including Italy and oil producers, to “gradually transition away from fossil fuels”, until reaching net zero in 2050.
The tools are the “renewable energies” to triple by 2030 and “energy efficiency“to be doubled for the same date.
Electrification and batteries it’s “enabling technologies for the transition“, so long as “they have become increasingly available and less expensive”. The nuclear is mentioned for the first time, but as “marginal and secondary”. There carbon capture is defined as atechnology not yet mature”, to be reserved, if anything, for sectors that are difficult to demolish. In other words, there is no plan B for the energy transition.
