Biotech, environment, digital: Italian projects with the EU Seal of Excellence

Seventeen Italian projects for the double digital and energy transition have earned the European Commission's Step (Strategic Technology Platform) label of excellence, a kind of ticket for priority access to European projects and funding.

After an initial list drawn up at the end of last year, the Commission has defined the update of the initiatives with the 'stamp' of high technological quality: Italy touches on a value of more than 415 million, in the thematic areas of biotech (pharmaceuticals and biotechnology), cleantech (technologies for reducing environmental impact), digital/deep tech (frontier digital technologies) with initiatives planned in Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy, Piedmont, Apulia, Sicily, Tuscany and Veneto.

According to the European Commission, the label ("Step Seal") should serve several purposes: promoting high-quality proposals by certifying them, facilitating combined funding from different EU budget instruments, and attracting additional contributions, including private ones. A further advantage, for Step projects, was decided by the CIPESS at its last meeting, namely the possibility of applying a 100 per cent co-financing rate from European resources over the 2023-2024 accounting period (in practice, the state is not required to co-finance structural funds).

But there are also critical issues. The main associations of Italian companies, for example, in a series of technical discussions, have pointed out to the government the need to urge Brussels to enact some corrections to the state aid regulations in order to extend the opportunities and advantages of the Step platform also to large companies operating in the so-called 'non-assisted areas' of the Aid Charter.

Returning to the projects of excellence, most fall within the 'Cleantech' sphere, i.e. 'clean' technologies aimed at reducing environmental impact. The most substantial plan, worth EUR 182 million, was presented by Energie Tecnologie Ambiente to valorise the CO2 captured from the exhaust gases of the Manfredonia power plant in Puglia, using it as a raw material for the production of renewable methanol together with green hydrogen. Enel Production and Enel Green Power joined the EU list with a programme - BESS4Hydro (EUR 1.86 million) - that combines a lithium-ion battery storage system with a reservoir hydroelectric plant, the Dossi power station in Lombardy. Also in the field, among others, are the Marcegaglia group with its project for the capture of CO2 produced by the Ravenna plant (EUR 31.2 million); FuturaSun for a photovoltaic module production factory in Cittadella (EUR 21.4 million); and the Saras group with its Re-Tyre CO2 initiative for the recovery, recycling and reuse of end-of-life tyres (EUR 9.3 million).