The Commission is ploughing ahead blindly with the Green Deal’s objectives

The European Union’s persistent tendency to pile objective upon objective relating to the Green Deal, continually raising the bar, and without any critical reflection on how things actually stand, now seems truly inexplicable. A senseless compulsion to repeat. The latest development is the requirement for 46 per cent of final energy consumption to be electrified by 2040. Meanwhile, Brussels has sent a letter of formal notice to all (!) 27 EU member states for failing to transpose the previous ‘Green Homes’ Directive. But if all 27 are behind schedule, perhaps there is a problem that people clearly do not want to acknowledge. And the problem – as big as a house – concerns feasibility and costs. The share of electricity in final energy consumption in the EU – that is, the proportion of the energy we consume that is supplied by electricity – stood at 21 per cent in 2011; today it is 23 per cent. In 15 years, we have gained two percentage points. Over the next 15 years, we are expected to gain 23.

Italy is more or less in line with this, at just over 22 per cent. Where should the new electricity consumption come from? Or, rather, which areas of consumption currently met by fossil fuels could instead be met by electricity? Today, two of the most significant drivers of growth in electricity consumption are air conditioning and data centres. But these represent additional consumption that has little impact on penetration rates. Whereas the two sectors where action is needed to replace fossil fuels with electricity are private transport and heating. And a bit of industry. Electric cars and heat pumps. But how many? The precise calculations need to be done: has the Commission done them? I fear, as usual, that they haven’t, but we can say with a fair degree of certainty that, for Italy, this means registering at least a couple of million electric cars every year right up to 2040 (94,000 were registered in 2025) and around one and a half million heat pumps (500,000 in 2025) at the same annual rate. Furthermore, the industry’s share should rise from the current 40 per cent – which is already high – to 50 per cent. The breakdown may vary between the different components, but these are the figures. They are on an extraordinary scale. As regards heat pumps, we must also bear in mind the nature of private housing in Italy. Sixty per cent of flats have floor areas of less than 100 square metres; a large proportion of these do not have balconies and are heated by independent gas-fired boilers. Many are occupied by low-income households for whom a heat pump represents a significant investment. These same households would then also have to bear the cost of replacing their old cars with electric vehicles. We are talking about bringing everything into line with the Directive at a cost of several hundred billion euros. Who is going to provide the funding for a fair and just transition? The state? Are we going to resort to bonuses and ‘super-bonuses’ again? If we want to continue fuelling popular anger against the EU – which is being exploited by all the anti-European movements – this is the right path to take.

Then there are the issues relating to the electricity grid, which has already shown several shortcomings this summer in meeting peak demand, particularly in the evenings. With the widespread introduction of heat pumps, air conditioners and electric car battery charging – which will mainly take place in the evenings – hundreds of billions will need to be invested to bring the grid up to that level of demand. This will inevitably be passed on to consumers’ bills. Naturally, all the energy used will have to be low-carbon, which means – pending a hoped-for resumption of investment in nuclear power – renewable sources. The main source, solar power, produces between a third and a quarter of the amount it does in summer during the winter, when heat pumps would be operating at full capacity. It would therefore be necessary to over-invest in generation capacity, only to end up with large surpluses of electricity that would have to be ‘curtailed’ on summer days. In short, the Commission continues to set targets without considering the social or economic implications, nor the practical feasibility. The impression is that it is now preaching to the wind and, as demonstrated by the formal notice issued to all 27 countries, many are beginning to take it less seriously. But is there really no one in Brussels who does the maths?