Grillism backs down again on incinerators

The first mayor elected on the Five Star Movement ticket in a major city – Parma – was Federico Pizzarotti. But his honeymoon period lasted only a few months, not with the city – which, in fact, recognised his considerable ability – but with his own political movement. Having read the documents and studied the project, Pizzarotti decided not to terminate the contract with Iren for the construction of a new waste-to-energy plant. This was exactly the opposite of what he had promised during the election campaign and of what was set out in the Five Star Movement’s election manifestos throughout Italy. Virginia Raggi, the former mayor of the capital, is still at loggerheads with Roberto Gualtieri, who is building one to serve Rome. Waste-to-energy plants – complex machines that burn the non-recyclable portion of municipal waste, producing electricity and often heat – are the bane of the Five Star Movement. In those circles, it is believed that waste can simply vanish into thin air.

But now the Five Star Movement’s first regional president is getting involved too. In the region governed by Alessandra Todde, an incinerator is set to come into operation in a few months’ time. Here too, realism has prevailed – not least because Ms Todde, an engineer, certainly knows how to do the maths. Nonetheless, the president has placed herself in a somewhat awkward position. She has promoted a moratorium on new renewable energy plants while authorising the opening of an incinerator. The Five Star Movement and the entire broad coalition are now struggling to make sense of it. At the time of the events in Parma, the movement – then still known as the ‘Grillini’ – maintained that waste-to-energy and separate waste collection were incompatible. The former, it was claimed, would have undermined the latter. The result: after more than 10 years of the plant being in operation, separate waste collection has risen from 45 per cent to 80 per cent. A record. And Pizzarotti, who had in the meantime been expelled from the Five Star Movement, stood for re-election and was re-elected as mayor for a second term.