'Methane dependent, but prices are high'

"Ours is an important energy sector. It contributes to the country's balance of trade, sets the standard worldwide for its level of innovation and ability to stay in the market. Yet, in the policies that must accompany the energy transition, it is the most forgotten. A lack that must be filled. In Europe and in Italy'. This is how Franco Manfredini, chairman of the Energy Commission of Confindustria Ceramica, comments on the situation of a sector that continues to suffer from very high energy costs, compared to international competitors: "In Italy we have the highest energy prices in Europe, already the highest in the world. And we have to consume methane".

Manfredini emphasises how the sector is subject to the Ets system, 'which weighs heavily on our expenses and is destined to be increasingly so. The energy bill weighs on the competitiveness of our companies. We have been saying this for years, and for years we have been denouncing certain distortions that penalise us: for example, the very implementation of the Ets system, which does not reward the best performing companies, or the failure to apply the Cbam (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, ed.) to our sector'.

Manfredini makes a more general reflection: 'Ceramics is a sector exposed to international competition and carbon leakage (the transfer of CO2 production beyond European borders, ed.). It therefore has every right to have access to support for competitiveness such as the derogations in the Ets system and those for state aid. What we are receiving is unjustified treatment with respect to the very guidelines that underpin these mechanisms'.

With regard to possible alternatives to the use of methane, the chairman of Confindustria Ceramica's Energy Commission confirms the sector's readiness to explore them: 'We are ready to adopt them, but at the moment there are none and we do not know if and when there will be. Hydrogen is not a viable route at the moment. Biomethane represents derisory quantities for our needs'. Manfredini is doubtful about instruments designed specifically for large methane consumers, such as the Gas Release, a measure that was announced but never got off the ground: 'These are mechanisms that are not decisive. We want structural measures, not emergency ones, for an energy sector exposed to international competition, with a risk of delocalisation'.