Russian gas, Italy’s race against time to limit rationing

There were the allusions, then the most alarmed words. Now there are the facts. The hypothesis of having to do without Russian gas is becoming increasingly concrete. And above all for Italy the race against time has long begun to be able to do without supplies from Moscow, given that Putin is already starting to turn off the taps. And that today Gazprom has reduced the amount of gas that Eni uses every day by a third. The government has long been aware of the gravity of the situation and is trying to minimize an impact that will inevitably be there. “The energy crisis is very serious, the risks are very high for the winter, if the Russian gas were to stop”, said the undersecretary to the Prime Minister Roberto Garofoli. “It’s a race against time,” he warned. The risk “is that Russian gas does not arrive or that it arrives in smaller quantities. We are busy filling up the storage, we have to reach 90% before the autumn begins.” Russia is made up of a mix of short-term interventions, to buffer the emergency, and medium-term ones, to tackle the problem from a structural perspective. On the one hand, alternative gas supplies, on the other, acceleration on renewables and national production. The variable that remains in between is that of consumption. Will they be reduced? How and how much, and starting from whom? The first answers begin to arrive. If the emergency level were to be raised, it would start with gas rationing for energy-intensive industries, those that consume more of it to function, and with greater use of coal-fired power plants for the production of electricity. It is evident that the short term, and therefore the emergency, is in contrast with the objectives of the energy transition and with the medium-long term. But the situation calls for putting priorities in order. And there are few measures that can be implemented right away. Others will arrive soon after. “At this moment there is a need to emancipate oneself from Russian imports which, as we see every day, are the subject of uncertainty”, highlighted Stefano Venier, Snam CEO. On this front, he recalled, “in addition to optimizing the axles already available, we bought two ships”. Two floating regasification plants that “we plan to make one operational as early as next year and the other the following year precisely as quickly as possible because time is a resource that we must not waste”. Before next year and the following year, however, there is next winter. “We are working on storage. Last night we had 6 billion and 100 million cubic meters of storage available, which correspond to 64% of the target we set ourselves, or 11 billion. Our contribution was one billion and half and we hope to continue to give our support “. In this scenario, far from simple, there is the theme of energy saving. He can and must contribute, but he cannot solve the problem alone. “Saving energy is a duty” and the sober consumption measures are simple but allow for significant savings, recalled the Minister of Ecological Transition, Roberto Cingolani. How many savings? “If we lower the average heating temperature by one degree and decrease the daily heating period by one hour, we could save about 1.5 billion, 2 billion cubic meters of gas. Just as the transition to LED lighting systems would allow us to to achieve total savings of about half a billion cubic meters of gas per year “. It is an important contribution, and it will be useful, but in the race against time to keep the Italian energy system on its feet, immediate and ‘painful’ corrections to habits are also needed . And those will come too. (by Fabio Insenga)