Know-how: Italy is a step ahead

“The Italian power sector has many excellent features. Our CCGT power generation fleet is among the most efficient in the world; we set an example for a lot of other countries. We have installed 32 million electronic power meters, which is unprecedented globally speaking. Our service quality levels provide a European benchmark”.
Matteo Codazzi, CEO of CESI – a company that holds a prominent position in the International engineering and technical consultancy services market – depicts an optimistic view of the energy sector. Yet, it does have some black spots. “As a matter of fact, in Italy the cost of a kWh did not decrease as expected. The question, then, is: what do all those excellent features of the power sector serve for ? Furthermore, liberalization in the gas sector cannot be said to be fully accomplished”.
One more penalizing factor is the lack of a common European energy policy. “There is no truly common European market for energy. Europe energy markets integrations is still in Stone Age. And that poses a toll on energy costs and business competitiveness. The fuel mix might be unbalanced at the level of an individual Member State, but if we look at Europe as a whole, at the big picture, we find the perfect mix: 26% coal, 22% renewable, 20% nuclear, with oil being virtually absent and gas accounting for the remaining portion”. But, in order to take advantage of such a perfect mix we need to invest in further interconnection capacity. Despite that, he is pleased with running a company that hit some records in 2011 and keeps growing in international markets: even in times of crisis, innovation and know-how are powerful weapons with which to win the market war. He also has a dream for the future. “Currently CESI’s focus is on power networks. I’d like to think of CESI as a network engineering company, that is, a company with cross disciplinary competencies in the fields of electricity, gas and water. A huge portion of the testing and advisory know-how we have built in the power sector could serve as a common background and I believe that many of our competencies are not just specific to a type of fluid, be it water, gas or kWh of power”.