A Non-2-Dimensional European Reads the Newspaper

Affordable energy = growth. Expensive energy = impoverishment for the poor and middle income and no growth. “Renewables” = bogus moral vanity of the non-productive, non-producing, and detached.

The truth is that Italy wastes its subsidies and uses the costliest sources. Nuclear energy was mothballed before the power stations were fully depreciated, bringing forward billion-euro decommissioning costs by decades. In 1992, Italy adopted the CIP 6 measures, which for assimilated energy – gas treated as a renewable source – will end up adding €20 billion in incentives to bills over its 15 or 20-year lifespan. In 2007, energy watchdog chair Alessandro Ortis managed to put a €600 million cut in place by interpreting the avoided fuel cost’s tariff component very strictly. But this only lasted two years until the Council of State upheld appeals from the big groups that had cornered all the public resources. Compensatory price hikes loom.

In 2012, aid for renewables gets into full stride. Some €160-170 billion is budgeted from 2005 to 2034, much of it concentrated in this decade. It’s a huge burden on household energy bills without even creating a national manufacturing base for the sector,