One in three industrial districts in Italia is at the mercy of energy shocks
Civiqa study in collaboration with OpenEconomics: out of 111 heavy manufacturing clusters, 31 are most exposed to the risk of price rises
Last week, the ECB warned that the energy shock is yet to come. The wave of price rises linked to the surge in commodity prices triggered by the war in Iran and the Hormuz factor will be inevitable. But where will the impact be felt most keenly? To answer this question, Civiqa (a platform supporting public administration) has collaborated with OpenEconomics to produce the study ‘Energy Risk and the Productive Structure of Regions’, which calculates an energy exposure index for Italian districts.
Topping the list of the most vulnerable regions are the manufacturing and logistics hubs of the North-West: Genoa, Lodi and Novara, followed by Taranto, Piacenza, Livorno, Brindisi, Syracuse, Vigevano and Cagliari, to name the top ten. Looking at Italia as a whole (see also the map opposite), a broad band emerges stretching from Piedmont to Romagna in the north, with a more enclave-like configuration in the south. The top positions overall are occupied by the western Po Valley logistics and manufacturing corridor. The central-southern Adriatic corridor is also evident, where the steel and petrochemical industries are concentrated in short-supply-chain clusters, extending all the way to the ports and coastal hubs on the Tyrrhenian Sea.
The starting point for this mapping is the 515 ‘local labour systems’ used by Istat to define the Italian labour markets, including tourism systems, urban systems and non-specialised systems (without a specific sectoral focus). Within this broad framework, the study identifies 52 systems as being in the category most exposed to energy shocks. Of these, 31 are part of the heavy industry sector, which is present across Italia in 111 districts: roughly one in three is therefore highly exposed to energy price rises. Six out of ten of the most vulnerable are specialised in steel, chemicals, ceramics, metals or shipbuilding.
According to the study by Civiqa and OpenEconomics, 13.1 million Italians live in these 52 areas: 22.2 per cent of the total Italian population. To break down the figures geographically: 22 of the 52 local authorities in the most exposed category are in the North, 9 in the Centre, and 21 in the South and on the islands. However, the degree of concentration varies. In the South and on the islands, 33.6 per cent of residents live in a local system in the most exposed category, compared with 18.1 per cent in the North and 12.7 per cent in the Centre.
How was this index calculated? By cross-referencing various variables. Two economic factors: how much energy the various systems consume directly and to what extent they rely on supply chains that involve upstream risks; and one demographic factor: the population. The study also takes into account a factor that mitigates the first two: the penetration of renewables across the region. The greater their share in the local energy mix, the lower the so-called economic exposure (i.e. net of the population’s weight). The ‘shield’ – as the study states – is significant in the Aosta Valley, the province of Bolzano, Basilicata, the Marche, the province of Trento and Sicily.
