THE COST of renewable sources and clean energy hits Calabrian citizens particularly hard; in fact, despite being a region that contributes significantly to national energy production, Calabria pays the environmental price of the multiplication of large plants and more. There is also the omega factor which exorbitantly increases the bills of companies and public structures forced to “insure”, with a heavy outlay, the possible presence of bad payers.
THE CLEAN ENERGY BALANCE SHEET IN CALABRIA
Piero Polimeni, engineer of Net – Environment and Natural Risks innovation hub of Calabria and former professor at the universities of Messina and Reggio Calabria, in explaining the problems that persist in clean and renewable energy, focuses on a fundamental starting point: «The Calabria’s consumption does not require all the energy that is produced. Yet, in the Crotone area and in the Lamezzo area we can say that there is now an “iron landscape”, because we have a considerable amount of wind farms that produce energy that is exported both within Italy and abroad. In order to make an energy balance we must consider that what we consume is much lower than the energy we produce with all types of systems, from gas ones to those using renewable sources. With wind and photovoltaic we manage to export two thirds of the energy we produce, we are talking about billions of kWh, 9 Gigawatts are produced and around 6 are exported every year”. Our history of energy exports comes from afar, Calabria, in fact, has always been home to the location of plants that used oil or methane to produce a certain number of kWh that were used for national consumption «just think of the Rossano power plant – Polimeni recalls – which first ran on oil, then was transformed into fuel oil and then again into gas; with its power units, it has always produced energy that we have never consumed, because the Calabrian production system is not as energy intensive as in other parts of Italy.”
But not only has adequate wealth for the region never been derived from all this, but all the “environmental costs”, such as the waste and residues produced by the power plants, have always been borne by Calabria. «It is even worse – explains Polimeni – because not only has wealth never been generated through this excess production, but today the cost we pay is that of land consumption with enormous wind and photovoltaic systems. Plants built by multinational companies that have also brought out all the benefits.”
SUITABLE AND UNSUITABLE AREAS
On the areas suitable and unsuitable for the construction of new plants, a topic that will become decisive from now to the immediate future, the Net engineer proposes a reflection starting from a precise assumption: «If a region like Calabria looks at the suitability of the areas from the point of view exclusively of the producibility of clean energy, then it is one of the most privileged regions: this is because it has a high amount of insolation (i.e. number of days in which it is sunny) and some areas are strongly ventilated all year round and therefore suitable for the installation of wind turbines. But this exclusive criterion of economic convenience has led to a considerable installation and multiplication of systems. Now the possibility of positioning offshore plants is also being presented. We know that in Calabria, in our stretches of sea, windiness has an important value and we could continue to produce clean energy and carry not only Italy but also Europe on our shoulders. But the truth is that the construction of these systems is not suitable from a landscape point of view.”
«The European directive on suitable and unsuitable areas, which has been implemented by the government, should lead the regions to define, prior to the issuing of new concessions, the suitable areas compatible with the landscape plan (which however is missing in Calabria) – explains Polimeni – this it is a regulatory gap that must be filled quickly. It is true that the regional plan that the urban planning law had initiated defines some elements to be protected, but the fundamental instrument of the landscape plan is missing which we anxiously await because it could give us indications, even binding ones, on potentially suitable areas”.
There is another consideration to make, that relating to the regional energy and climate plan (in relation to the integrated national plan for energy and climate). «The Calabrian one does not make a choice, and this is criticisable, because it does not place a moratorium on the location of new large plants (which consume soil on the one hand and do not safeguard the landscape in general) and above all we have not yet understood what the adaptation interventions to climate change – explains Polimeni – therefore talking about suitable and unsuitable areas in the absence of a defined plan is an unresolved issue which does not give us elements of guarantee for the protection of the territory. We risk having suitable areas considered as such only from a production point of view and instead not sustainable from an environmental and landscape point of view.”
ENERGY COMMUNITIES
There is a solution, however, which is also offered by European directives, which in fact indicate that local communities are the protagonists in energy consumption. They are the so-called energy communities, made up of municipalities that start from their own sources and enhance them by exchanging energy at a local level. The Net engineer specifies that «The EU explains that it is useless to detach ourselves from the national grid to create local networks and requires that the national networks, which are large reservoirs, allow energy to be exchanged at a local level. The Municipality can, therefore, evaluate what the consumption is at a local level and what the resources are and then produce the energy needed by that community, thus becoming autonomous producers and consumers by exploiting the national transmission network in order to reduce polluting emissions. We remind you that the EU provides incentives for this virtuous use.”
Polimeni has no doubts about the fact that Calabria should replace the proposal for the construction of new large clean and renewable energy plants with the increase in energy communities and states: «We no longer want our territory to be a socially useful space with no return , we demand that our resources be valorised, we want to share them and at the same time reduce the consumption of non-renewable sources through the mechanism of the energy community. Our regional plan must make a choice: we cannot have both energy communities and large plants.”
