TO: press.president@consilium.europa.eu, press.office@consilium.europa.eu
CC: lettere@corriere.it, uscitizensflorence@state.gov, press@manchin.senate.gov, segr.ufficiostampa@mite.gov.it, chigicomunicazione@governo.it, EC-RECOVER@ec.europa.eu, comp-greffe-antitrust@ec.europa.eu, cab-gentiloni-contact@ec.europa.eu, frans-timmermans-contact@ec.europa.eu, sostenibilita@terna.it
Florence, 8.9.22
President Michel,
in view of tomorrow’s Energy meeting, it’s good to remind that Finnish Minister Lintila days ago stated that this situation has “the ingredients for a kind of a Lehman Brother of energy industry”( https://www.corriere.it/economia/finanza/22_settembre_06/crisi-energetica-perche-si-rischia-altro-caso-lehman-95907de6-2d54-11ed-82e8-8adda605a86c.shtml ), which is more or less the conclusion of my registered letter sent to President Biden almost a year ago: “are we sure that sooner or later another Lehman Brothers won’t happen again?” ( https://www.civitasdemocratica.it/2021/10/19/to-the-president-of-the-united-states-of-america/ ).
Italian Minister Cingolani has been proposing to “decouple the price of renewable energies from thermoelectric” ( https://www.corriere.it/economia/consumi/22_settembre_07/cingolani-piano-gas-00935e30-2e20-11ed-aea6-eaa2f969967c.shtml), but for sure, as Italian President Mattarella invoked last week, a common EU response is necessary.
While US President just signed the ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ (by gracious permission of Sen. Manchin, hopefully reading us in CC) for the purpose of boosting green economy and fighting climate change, in Europe more and more people are getting suspicious over the fact that the “gas market of Amsterdam is subject to manipulations which do not reflect the demand and supply of real economy” ( https://www.corriere.it/opinioni/22_settembre_01/energia-ombre-troppo-con-illustri-precedenti-13056074-2a0e-11ed-8963-d54a3aeaa2d9.shtml ).
Please find enclosed below some energy issues forwarded to the ‘Recovery & Resilience Task Force’: a solution to decouple the energy market could be reached with the implementation of energy maps (similar to Google maps) which monitor the state of energy production of each building, not only renewables (if any), but also waste and sewage used to generate biogas. Energy providers and local utilities own this information, it’s just a matter of reorganizing it in order to increase flexibility of the grid and promote energy communities, which should finally lead us to an energy market, as well capacity market, based on real demand and supply (documentation of this idea was formally submitted to Terna, the Italian elecricity transmission system operator, at the end of 2018).
Time to act is now, or the Consilium is still willing to appear as ‘les yeux sans visage’?
Sincerely