Perotti: 'Forced by politics to put the brakes on green development, EU to intervene'

Sanlorenzo's green path, that Road to 2030, which envisaged the construction of increasingly environmentally friendly boats, has come to a halt. And not because the patron of the luxury yacht group, Massimo Perotti, wanted it to, but because the world geopolitical situation has forced a halt to the construction of green fuels and the creation of infrastructure to distribute them. But it is the entrepreneur himself who pronounces a clear 'I don't agree'. And from Venice climate week, which began yesterday and runs until 8 June, he launches a twofold challenge: to Europe and the institutions, asking them to align themselves and take action to guarantee the availability of renewable fuels, particularly methanol and hydrogen, and infrastructures that would allow the nautical sector to apply to yachts the green technologies that already exist and that would already allow B-fuel engines to be fitted on board, 70% methanol and 30% diesel. Perotti's appeal to stakeholders, therefore, is to accelerate investment in alternative fuels and is embodied in a letter that the entrepreneur will hand over on Monday 8 to the European Commissioner for the Environment, Jessika Roswall, the day after a dinner held at the Casa Sanlorenzo cultural centre.

Cavalier Perotti, in the absence of action from Brussels, will the Road to 2030 come to a standstill?

We have already stopped it with the beginning of 2026. After the launch of the 50-steel yacht Almax in 2024, the first in the world with a methanol fuel cell system, which I had purchased myself, we prepared the project for the construction of the 50-metre hull on which the B-fuel engines would be mounted, but we have now stopped the construction of the boat. We had also activated an investment plan coming from Europe, which would have involved both Nanni Industries, which produces the methanol generators, and the Italian importer of Man engines, and which would have financed the construction of the generator and the engine, as well as, in part, the construction of the boat. But now everything is blocked, because the market does not exist. If you go to a customer today and say: I'll make you a boat that is sustainable because 70% of it runs on green methanol, he'll say: I'm very happy to, but I won't buy it because I don't know where to get green methanol. The problem is that there is a lack of sufficiently strong production to be able to assume the distribution of this methanol in the next few years: less than 1% of global production of this type of product comes from renewable sources, with availability concentrated in large hubs such as the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp.

So, he decided to appeal to Brussels.

Yes, and Venice climate week is a huge opportunity in this sense, because it gives us the chance to have more than 100 scientists from all over the world, interested journalists and the presence of European authorities. Today, if you want to go by boat in the Mediterranean and fill up with a fuel other than diesel, you have to be sure that Spain, France, Greece, former Yugoslavia distribute it, because otherwise you are forced to stay in Italia. In our country, in fact, we've already made progress: we're the most advanced as far as regulations are concerned, thanks to the fact that Sanlorenzo put the first 50-metre with fuel cell into the sea, in the summer of 2024, when no port in the Mediterranean was still distributing methanol; the following summer, moreover, after a winter in which we worked well with Confindustria nautica and the government, the protocols arrived. In the meantime, however, over the last 16-18 months, the world has changed, to the point that the gentlemen from Blackrock, who are among the leading US funds, the same ones who in 2021 had asked us to make a serious project on sustainability, or they would have left the company as investors, in recent months have raised their arm and said: we were wrong, on sustainability we are going back.