A-Infos (en) Italy, FAS Sicilia Libertaria: Energy belongs to those who produce it (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Energy is a crucial issue and will become increasingly so, just think of 
the developments in artificial intelligence, or more simply the fact 
that every aspect of our lives needs energy. The wars in Ukraine and 
Gaza have confirmed the geopolitical interests for dominance in this 
sector, because whoever dominates energy dominates the world. This is 
demonstrated by the two global superpowers: China is a world leader in 
renewable energy and, above all, controls the entire supply chain, from 
raw materials to chips; In just a few years, the United States has 
transformed itself into an oil and gas exporting country thanks to the 
controversial technique of fracking. And on the other hand, the 
historical assumption on which the industry is based is this: those who 
produce the energy almost never own it. This is even more true in 
Sicily. In fact, our region is the pivot of national policies that 
intend to make Italy the energy hub, that is, a system in which the 
State imports every type of energy from Africa - from hydrogen to raw 
materials useful for biofuels , from gas to renewables - and then export 
it to Northern Europe through Sicily, which acts as a real bridge.

In this scenario, the prospect of differentiated autonomy will 
strengthen this colonial model. Italian energy is still based 
predominantly on fossil fuels. And the equation is clear: the more 
fossil fuels we use, the more we import, considering that there are few 
of them in Italy, as the history of Enrico Mattei and Eni also teaches 
us, which becomes a global power only when it expands into Africa and in 
the Middle East. It was true for oil, it was true for gas, it was true 
even more for LNG, liquefied natural gas, which is only export gas and 
typically travels via ships. Just in the last few days a historic 
overtaking took place: for the first time in Italy the gas arriving by 
ship surpassed the gas arriving through gas pipelines. The most obvious 
consequence is in the price: if for gas via pipelines the price is 
usually established through long-term contracts, for gas via ships the 
price is linked to market fluctuations. But there's more. In Italy, in 
the energy field, differentiated autonomy has theoretically already been 
in place for more than 20 years.

When the constitutional reform was sanctioned in 2001 which 
theoretically proposed, in a federalist key, to give more powers to the 
Regions, it was established that the matter of energy would be placed 
under "concurrent legislative power", i.e. production, transport and the 
national distribution of energy, according to the new art.117 of the 
Constitution, would have been entrusted to the State for the principle 
regulations and to the Regions for the detailed regulations. In reality, 
on such a crucial issue, the State has never guaranteed room for 
maneuver to the Regions, imposing on them the infrastructures it deemed 
necessary. We saw it, for example, in Sicily, when in 2004 in six months 
the GreenStream gas pipeline was installed in Gela which brought gas to 
Sicily from Libya, ruled by Gaddafi who was a friend of the Berlusconi 
government. However, in these 20 years not a drop of that gas has 
remained on the island, because this gas was brought to the industries 
of Northern Italy through the Snam national distribution network. And 
this is what we are also seeing currently: the desire to no longer 
depend on Russian gas, defined as "ugly and bad" because it comes from 
that bloodthirsty dictator Putin, has been accompanied by the 
replacement of that gas with other gas coming from other equally 
authoritarians, from Qatar to Algeria, from Egypt to Azerbaijan. This 
"new" gas, as we have seen, travels mainly by ship. This is why the aim 
of the Meloni government is to build a regasification terminal in Porto 
Empedocle (and another in Gioia Tauro), after having installed one in 
Piombino in 2023 in record time and another shortly in Ravenna.

According to the study "The state of gas", carried out by the ECCO 
climate research centre, the current infrastructure allows the safety 
requirements to be met for scenarios aligned with climate objectives. In 
no case would further gas infrastructure contribute in a useful way to 
the Italian and European energy system. The terminals in Gioia Tauro and 
Porto Empedocle, assessed as "strategic and urgent" by the Energy 
Security law decree, are in fact not used in any scenario either to 
cover demand or to free up volumes to be exported abroad. In the 
meantime, however, the Argo-Cassiopea gas pipeline, also owned by Eni, 
will be finished this year and this gas will also not remain in Sicily. 
The municipalities involved - Gela, Licata and Porto Empedocle - were 
satisfied with the royalties. And Mazara del Vallo seems to want to do 
the same, where the Transmed gas pipeline from Algeria has existed since 
the 1970s, which from 2022 has become the most important energy 
infrastructure in Italy given that a third of the gas consumed in 
national level. An identical, if not worse, scenario looms with the 
invasion of photovoltaic and wind power plants of which our island is 
the victim: in 2023 more than half of the photovoltaic projects at 
national level were authorized in Sicily.

And so, faced with such a scenario, the perspective must be reversed. 
The energy assault by the state and multinationals, which would probably 
be strengthened with differentiated autonomy, must turn into an occasion 
for conflict. Placing on the one hand the redistribution of energy 
towards the territories that produce it and, on the other, demanding the 
elimination of electricity and gas bills. If Sicily already has, and 
will increasingly have, a central role in the production of energy for 
the whole of Italy, then the island must be guaranteed the best and most 
adequate conditions so that we can move from exploitation to valorisation.

Andrea Turco

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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