A2A, electricity reorganisation in Lombardy 'Ready to accelerate with new plan
by Cheo Condina
5' min read
5' min read
"An agreement between two major system players that work together for the electrification and energy transition of the country and that crowns four years of great sustainable growth for A2A, which has now become a national operator with a long-term horizon: the plan of great development and investment that we will present the day after tomorrow will be proof of this". These are the words of Renato Mazzoncini, CEO of A2A, commenting in an interview with Il Sole 24 Ore on the purchase of electricity networks in Lombardy from Enel for over 1.2 billion, or "the largest operation in the sector ever carried out in Italy, which allows us to increase the installed electricity meters by 70% to 2.1 million, becoming the second largest player in the country, as we are in generation, sales, and renewables". Not only: all this will bring additional investments of 1.4 billion and the group's electricity Rab to 3.4 billion in 2035. With one awareness: "The time for territorial aggregations is over: A2A and the country need deals that develop fundamental assets for the path towards Net Zero at 2050 and that we, as a company, can realise with our own resources".
Electrification: in a word, is that what the operation is all about?
A2A has a great history on the network, both Aem Milano and Asm Brescia have been investing in it since the beginning of the century, as has the country, which by the 1980s had reached 80% of its current infrastructure. Then there was a physiological stagnation in development, while today investments must be relaunched. Both because several installations are becoming obsolete, for example 60% of primary cabins are more than 30 years old. And, above all, because the large-scale penetration of renewables requires a much more important and strategic role for networks, dictated more generally by electrification and trends such as artificial intelligence, which will lead to exponential increases in consumption. In Milan today we have a peak power of 1.7 GW but we will have demands from data centres of up to 2-3 GW. Globally, 20 trillion investments are expected in electricity grids between now and 2050, 584 billion in Europe alone and up to 60 billion in Italy between 2020-2030.
How much will A2A invest in the assets it is taking over from Enel, i.e. the networks in the province of Milan that it does not already own and the densely populated Val Trompia from an industrial point of view?
Until 2020 we invested an average of 40 euros per year per meter, in the three-year period 21/23 we have increased to 150 euros and this is the pace we will keep for the next thirty years: for the networks surveyed by Enel this means forecasting 1.4 billion euros in the period 2025/2035. In these heavily inhabited and industrialised areas, we expect an increase in peak electric power of up to 50% in a decade, against a national average of 30%. At the beginning of the millennium, both Aem and Asm had already bought parts of the grid from Enel: today we are completing a path that will take our electricity Rab from 700 million in 2020 to 3.4 billion in 2035, with an average annual investment of almost 400 million when fully operational.
