Sustainable Development Foundation, Italy's climate strategy outdated and inadequate

Outdated and inadequate to reach the new climate targets set by Europe: this is how, according to the Foundation for Sustainable Development, Italy's Climate Strategy for 2050, defined by the Conte government and sent to the European Commission last week, appears.

"The main limitation of this strategy - underlined Edo Ronchi, president of the foundation - is the lack of updating the target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. The climate strategy, in fact, still refers to the now outdated reduction target. by 40% compared to 1990, much lower than the cut of 55% established by the European Union and therefore not in line with the objective of carbon neutrality by 2050 ".

Among other things, the Climate Strategy provides that by 2050 final energy consumption will be reduced by 40% compared to today, that electricity consumption will grow to 50% of total energy consumption (today just over 20%), and that share from renewable sources reaches 85-90% (today it is about 18%).

The car fleet in circulation in Italy is also expected to be reduced from about 40 to 24 million vehicles thanks to a shift from private mobility towards public, shared transport and soft mobility.

The decarbonization scenario outlined by the Italian strategy also envisages reaching 2050 with approximately 65-85 MtCO2eq (million tonnes of CO2 equivalent) of emissions considered incompressible, equal to 15-20% of current emissions, offset by carbon removals through forests or CO2 capture and storage or reuse technologies.

"Italy, the co-organizing country, together with the United Kingdom, of the next climate conference in Glasgow (COP26) in early November - said Ronchi - cannot attend this event without having updated its climate plan to 2030, because these updates are exactly the core of COP 26 ".