Waking up to industrial competitiveness

To the Editor – Those who purchase energy must transform it every day into products capable of competing on the global stage. At ABS, the steel division of the Danieli Group, we consume around 1 TWh of electricity per year: every 10 euro per megawatt-hour that we are at a disadvantage compared to a European competitor amounts to 10 million euro per year. Italy has introduced important measures, and for this I thank the government. We have diversified our supplies, invested in efficiency and utilised Energy Release, Interconnector and on-site generation. But mitigating costs is not enough to build structural competitiveness. I believe in PPAs – long-term power purchase agreements. But a steelworks cannot know today what its consumption will be in twenty years’ time, nor can it consume energy only when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. We need industrial PPAs that are flexible in terms of duration and volumes, tailored to consumption patterns, with revisions and exit clauses agreed in advance.

Businesses must bear the ordinary risk: I am calling for predictability, not immunity from the market. The guarantee already in place against counterparty default must be supplemented by pooling and risk-transfer mechanisms. For systemic shocks, I propose an extraordinary stabilisation mechanism, activated only if gas and electricity prices together exceed objective and persistent thresholds. It must be temporary, progressive, with a cap and a share of the risk always borne by the company. One model worth studying is SIMEST’s experience in stabilising export interest rates. In the meantime, we need production, renewables, storage, grids and faster authorisations. And an integrated and solidarity-based European energy system: the single market cannot coexist with permanent energy disadvantages. Energy independence by 2040 is a strategic objective. But we must reach that point whilst still being able to produce and invest: industrial competitiveness is the prerequisite for achieving this.