Energy Efficiency: key investments according to 2020 CESEF workshop

Agici Finanza d’Impresa – a company specialized in research and consultancy for the utilities sector, renewables, infrastructures and energy efficiency – has presented the 2020 CESEF Workshop highlighting how energy efficiency could be an incredible driving force for the green recovery of Italy.

Although a huge amount of resources has been made available in Italy with the Recovery Plan, a reorganization of the fiscal regulations and clear rules are needed to make the sector a real engine of recovery. According to the report, there is a strong need for interventions and there are the skills necessary to carry them out. The resources are available, but there is a lack of a certain and long-term regulatory framework that facilitates the implementation of projects, giving operators certainty.

Amongst the partners involved in the workshop – which includes some of the most relevant players in the Italian energy and financial sectors – CESI has taken part in the roundtables and in the finalized report with Roberto Piccin (Head of Inspection & Certification Services – KEMA Labs Division). Our expert has underlined the need to invest in the safety and recycling of batteries which, together with smart grids and the interoperability of different technologies, will be crucial for the electrification of the system with an increase in the share of renewables in the country’s energy mix.

“To favor a double energy transition, an increase in electricity and renewables, it is necessary to create an electrical storage infrastructure”, according to Piccin. He added that “Lithium batteries will be the protagonists in this, in synergy with electric mobility, with over 500 GW of circulating power by 2030 in Italy. For this reason, as reported with certainty in the CESEF workshop, it is important that the Plan for National Recovery and Resilience (PNRR) pays the right attention to it.”

To summarize, the 2020 CESEF Workshop states that, in order to definitively unlock the enormous economic, environmental and social benefits associated with investments in energy efficiency, it is necessary at least to activate demand by imposing efficiency obligations for the public administration and for energy-intensive industries, to define a single text for the energy efficiency in the residential sector that collects, reorder and simplify the regulatory body of all forms of tax deduction, develop a system of financial and technical guarantees, to attract additional private resources in the sector.