A slow and contradictory ecological transition such as the one in Italy not only risks slowing down climate change mitigation, but also filling industrial processes and the economy with obsolete technologies, while taking resources away from the transition to clean energies. It is the phenomenon of carbon lock-in: focusing on fuel-related infrastructure today means committing to investments with a payback time of several decades, thus accepting that at some point you are at a crossroads between two bad options. The first is to continue using them until they expire, thus failing to meet climate decarbonisation targets. The second is to abandon them, leaving the state and corporate balance sheets full of stranded assets, resources that will have lost all value in the meantime and will no longer allow a return on initial investments.

On 20 July 2023, the Italian parliament definitively approved the decree on regasifiers. On the same day, the Ministry for the Environment and Energy Security sent the European Commission the new draft of the PNIEC - the National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan, still strongly linked to the old energy world.

In both cases, the two decisions project the use of fossil fuels, and of natural gas in particular, well beyond the timeframe set out in the European plans to reduce emissions from 2030 onwards, foreseeing a series of investments in new infrastructure and “without a clear exit strategy from fossil fuels, with an emergency vision that does not take into account the evolution of prices and demand”, as stated in the analysis published by the independent energy and climate think tank Ecco.

If from the energy point of view, the risk is mainly climatic and financial, from the production point of view there is also the risk of loss of competitiveness and de-industrialisation for some key sectors, starting with the automotive industry. Slowing down the transition to electricity, or diverting it to technologies with an uncertain future such as biofuels, risks pushing dozens of companies progressively out of the market.

This is particularly important for a country that is Europe's second-largest manufacturer, employing 4 million people and accounting for 20 per cent of GDP, but which has also seen an ageing and shrinking in recent years. For the hard-to-abate sectors, such as cement, glass, paper, ceramics, steel, research and innovation along avenues such as green hydrogen will be crucial, but where mature technologies already exist, such as automotive, rapid translation to sustainable technologies is important. In the event of rapid decarbonisation, according to a study by MBS Consulting, the employment rate will rise from 57% in 2020 to 68% in 2030, especially for young people under 34 and women.

However, the problem of lock-in risks is particularly evident when we look at the role of gas in the energy system. According to an old adage, “oil is an engagement, but gas is a marriage”. This is a way of saying that the complexity of the infrastructure required to use it and the length of contracts with foreign suppliers project the use of this source into the decades. What is decided in the early 2020s has consequences until the 2040s. According to a report by Carbon Tracker even before the outbreak of war in Ukraine, two-thirds of gas contracts had a duration of more than 20 years, the conflict has only made the spot price higher and encouraged stable agreements, which however increase the risk of projecting fossil investments into a future where they will become stranded assets.

In the energy chaos that erupted after the war in Ukraine, EU countries planned to increase their liquefied gas import capacity by 92% until 2026, with Germany in first place and Italy in second, with the signing of at least seven long-term contracts lasting until 2040 and beyond. The financial losses are likely to be in the order of EUR 11 billion, also because - according to a recent forecast by IEEFA (Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis) - gas demand in Europe already in 2030 will be 40 per cent of that in 2019. So, once again, the risk is to build infrastructure that will cease to be useful long before it pays for itself. 

According to an analysis by WRI, World Resources Institute, the payback time of an infrastructure investment can range from 14 years for residential to 80, for a median time of 27.5 years, which for gas goes up to 30. This means that a technology choice made today on gas has a projection beyond the EU's net zero terms: globally, $90 trillion will be spent on infrastructure over the next decade: “Choosing well what kind of investments to move towards will make a critical difference,” writes WRI, not only from the point of view of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and thus the impact on the climate crisis, but also for the return on those investments.

The symbol of this still fossil-bound strategy in the coming decades, the one in the time zone of stranded assets, is the decision to build new regasifiers, an approach also confirmed by the government's new PNIEC National Integrated Plan for Energy and Climate, but in contradiction with the RePowerEU plan. Once this technology is in the system, it generates a dependency that is very difficult to break. At the last Italian LNG Summit organised in Rome under the patronage of the Ministry of the Environment, the CEO of OLT Offshore LNG Toscana, a subsidiary of Snam that manages the regasifier in Livorno, said he expects that the operation of this infrastructure - currently scheduled to last until 2033 - could be extended by another ten or fifteen years, therefore until 2048, through a revamping, which would obviously have costs and would be an indication of a political and strategic choice.

In 2050, the year that Europe has vowed to be climate neutral, hydrogen will cover over 20% of the total energy needs in key sectors of the Italian economy. The same is expected in the rest of the countries engaged in the transition to full decarbonisation. This is one of the first studies of Hydrogen JRP, the Joint Research Platform undertaken by the Politecnico di Milano and its Foundation, in collaboration with some large companies, to develop scenarios and strategies for the production and consumption of carbon-free energy.

In fact, the European Commission estimates that in order to meet the Green Deal targets, the Union will need to increase energy production from renewable sources by more than 500 gigawatts (GW) already by 2030, requiring member states to achieve 40 percent of this target by 2025 as part of their NRRPs. Taking advantage of the opportunity offered by Europe, therefore, is not a futuristic theme, but rather an imminent necessity: that of working to build a new social and energy paradigm and launch a major industrial driver through the implementation of significant infrastructure investments and innovation.

Among the priorities indicated in the roughly three hundred pages of the NRRP, the Italian government intends to develop, and makes it clear, a technological and industrial leadership in the main sectors of the energy transition (photovoltaic systems, turbines, hydrolisers, batteries) that create jobs and growth through the development of the most innovative areas, starting with hydrogen.

Hydrogen, if used in a complementary manner with other technologies, can in fact contribute significantly to triggering more sustainable and clean industrial processes and can reduce emissions generated by the transport sector, as well as power generation and domestic heating. This would mean for Italy a reduction of CO2 amounting to more than 70 million tons, 20% of today's total emissions. Moreover, thanks to its unprecedented ability to act as a link between the gas and electricity sectors, as well as allowing the accumulation of large amounts of energy and its movement over time and in different areas of the country, hydrogen can provide flexibility to the energy system and a better exploitation of renewable sources.

In particular, the transportation sector is among the recipients of major transformations involving heavy and long-distance transportation (e.g., commercial vehicles and buses) and non-electrified rail, as well as aviation and parts of light transport. Long-haul transport is responsible for about 5-10 percent of overall CO₂ emissions. With the measures in the NRRP, we could see significant hydrogen penetration of up to 5-7 percent of the market by 2030. On the rail front, however, the focus is on passenger transportation. Currently, about a tenth of our networks are served by outmoded and soon-to-be-replaced diesel trains, making this the right time to switch to hydrogen, particularly where electrification is not technically feasible or is not competitive.

Hydrogen also plays an important role in "hard to abate" sectors, characterised by high energy intensity and lacking truly scalable full electrification options, such as in the chemical and oil refining industries, or in the steel (Italy is one of the largest producers in Europe, second only to Germany), cement, glass and paper sectors.

It is therefore clear that the transition to hydrogen requires, on the one hand, highly specialised new skills, and on the other hand, new technologies. Training and research are two mainstays of the change taking place. For this reason, it is essential to find a solid point of union between the academic and industrial worlds through common platforms and joint laboratories, where innovative technologies can be developed and tested. A place to prepare enabling strategies for the sustainable economy. A place to develop best practices for building and maintaining hydrogen infrastructure.

There are currently five main companies involved in the initiative of the Politecnico and its Foundation. They are part of Hydrogen JRP as founders: Edison, Eni, Snam, A2A and NextChem. However, the intention is to create a real hydrogen supply chain in Italy, expanding participation to the largest number of stakeholders. The first initiatives involve research on the entire value chain: from production, to transport and storage, up to end uses. Two approaches: horizontal projects on cross-cutting issues; vertical projects on specific technologies. The innovation district that is coming to life on the Bovisa Campus around the iconic gas tanks portrayed in Sironi's paintings is giving space to this initiative. Once again, Milan looks ahead. It opens its doors and from here the first steps are taken to promote the competitiveness of the country system.