The government majority takes a firm stance against stopping thermal cars from 2035, which was decided by the European Parliament on Tuesday. The measure was adopted with 340 votes in favour, 279 against and 21 abstentions. Center-left parties (including the Democratic Party), liberals (including Renzians), the Greens, and some of the moderates in the EPP took sides. A large part of the public voted against the rest of the right, including MPs from the main parties in Italy’s government: Forza Italia, Fratelli d’Italia and Lega.
According to Adolfo Urso, Minister of Business and Made in Italy, “the times and methods he imposes on us to say goodbye to traditional engines” do not coincide with European reality, but above all with Italian reality.
“In these times and with these methods, there is an occupational risk and a business risk. We don’t have time to re-transform our industrial system because we started late and several mistakes were made in the past,” Urso told Radio Anch’io. “Strategy investments, accelerating new technologies, factories, the electric battery supply chain, the creation of electric pillars. But we were too late. There are 36,000 charging points in Italy compared to 90,000 in the small Netherlands. Little has been done in recent years” .
Antonio Tajani, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, shared the concerns. “I’m a big supporter of the electric car, but ambitious goals must be met in earnest, not just on paper,” he told Tg1. “Therefore – he added – Italy will put forward its counter proposal: limiting the discount to 90%, allowing industries to adapt.” According to Forza Italia’s coordinator, stopping internal combustion engine cars from 2035 is therefore a “serious mistake” because “the fight against climate change must be made but requires attainable targets”.
On the same wavelength was Infrastructure Minister Matteo Salvini, who thundered on Twitter: The EU’s decision is a “crazy and disturbing decision” that goes “against Italian and European industries and workers, in the interests of businesses and Chinese people”. Ideology, ignorance or malice?” wonders the league’s leader.
How many charging stations are there in Italy?
But are we really behind in the transition to electricity? As for the number of columns, the answer can only be categorical: yes. According to the latest report by Motus-E, an association that supports “mass adoption of sustainable vehicles” and constantly monitors the state of the grid, 36,772 pillars for electric cars have been installed in Italy by the end of 2022. If it’s true that there was a significant increase in 2022 and that “charge points grew by 10,748 units” with an increase of 41%, it is equally undeniable that the comparison with other European countries clearly breaks us. A few examples: There are 74,185 charging points in France, 88,992 in Germany, 55,552 in the United Kingdom and 115,103 in the Netherlands.
Another problem is that there is a large gap between north and south in our country: about 58% of infrastructures are actually located in the northern regions, about 22% in the center and only 20% in the south and islands. It is true that there are still very few battery-powered cars in Italy, and so, as the report states, we actually rank second “after the Netherlands and Belgium in terms of the ratio between charging points and circulating electric vehicles”.
In December 2022, there were only 170,000 electric vehicles across the peninsula, and fewer than 50,000 registrations were registered in 2022, down 27% from the previous year. The report states that more than a million all-electric cars are on the road in Germany, and to give another example, 8 out of 10 cars registered in Norway in 2022 run on batteries only. So we are in an obvious paradox: precisely because the electric car is not taking off, Italy now has more charging points for vehicles in circulation than the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Norway.
Another big problem that will arise in the coming years is about electricity supply (we talked about it here). According to Terna’s forecasts, assuming a scenario consistent with the goals of the EU ‘Fit-for-55’ legislative package, energy needs will increase from 316 Twh to 366 Twh in 2030 due to electrification of the transport and heating sectors. Can we deal with a similar scenario by focusing only on renewables? Then there is the question of transforming an entire industrial sector, the automotive sector, which will inevitably have to invest entirely in electricity (and is already partially doing so). This is exactly one of the points that the Italian right insists on, which argues that the transition will lead to loss of employment and industrial capacity.
Source: Today IT
Roy Brown is a renowned economist and author at The Nation View. He has a deep understanding of the global economy and its intricacies. He writes about a wide range of economic topics, including monetary policy, fiscal policy, international trade, and labor markets.
