How much is Italy worth in renewable technologies. Intesa Sanpaolo Report
Italy is the sixth largest exporter in the world of technologies for renewable sources. And hydrogen can represent a new opportunity. All the details and numbers of the report from Intesa Sanpaolo's studies and research department
Italy, with 3 per cent of the world total, is the sixth largest exporter in the world of technologies for renewable sources, such as wind generators and photovoltaic devices. Our country is positioned after China (firmly in first place: in 2019 it was worth 27 percent of global exports), Germany (11 percent), the United States (7 percent), Japan and Hong Kong.
This is what emerges, among other things, from a report by the Intesa Sanpaolo Studies and Research Department , published this month, and entitled Energy transition: the renewable technology supply chain in Italy .
WHAT IS THE ENERGY TRANSITION
By energy transition we mean the process of detachment from fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) in favor of a greater use of renewable sources, such as wind and solar, for the generation of energy. The goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, up to their net zero: in this case we speak of "carbon neutrality", which many governments in the world have generally committed to achieving by 2050. 2030 represents a usually an intermediate step in this decarbonisation process: the European Union – and consequently Italy – wants to cut its CO2 emissions by at least 55 percent by this date, compared to 1990 levels.
THE NUMBERS OF THE ENERGY TRANSITION
In the last twenty years, a lot has been invested in renewable capacity installations, even if – as the study by Intesa Sanpaolo analysts points out – fossil fuels still represent more than 80 percent of final energy consumption worldwide.
According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), annual investments in renewables of USD 800 billion are needed by 2050 to achieve the Paris Agreement goals on limiting global warming: the average for the period 2013-2018. it is less than 300 billion.
HOW MUCH THE TRADE IN RENEWABLE TECHNOLOGIES IS WORTH
Trade in technologies for renewable energy sources (RES) accounted for about 1.4 per cent of trade. Generally speaking, the countries of East Asia dominate the sector of RES technologies and are specialized in components for photovoltaics, such as photosensitive devices; European countries, on the other hand, are stronger in wind and hydroelectric technologies, such as wind generators and speed multipliers.
ITALY HAS A POSITIVE TRADE BALANCE SINCE 2013
The strong specialization of Italy, which is the fourth exporter in the world, emerges precisely in the speed multipliers. Since 2013, our country has always had a positive trade balance with regard to RES technologies, despite the fact that it depends heavily on imports in some sectors. In the last five years, the average value of exports amounts to 4.7 billion euros.
Over 17 percent of Italian exports of RES technologies ends up in the United States.
PATENTS
The patents linked to technologies for RES are concentrated above all in the field of photovoltaics (41 per cent), then wind power (21 per cent), solar thermal (12 per cent) and biofuels (8 per cent). The members of the European Union own over a third of the patents on RES, especially in the wind sector: in this sector the Union is worth 62% of the world total.
HOW ITALIAN COMPANIES DO
In 2018, around 1200 Italian patents related to RES were filed with the European Patent Office (EPO): they mainly concern technologies for solar (55 per cent between photovoltaic and thermal) and for wind power (16 per one hundred). They are mostly deposited by micro or small companies, that is, with less than 10 million in turnover.
The Intesa Sanpaolo report identifies 400 Italian companies that produce components for renewable plants: they have a total turnover of 23 billion euros and employ around 60,000 employees in 2019. One in four companies has at least one patent.
THE HYDROGEN
The report describes hydrogen as “a new opportunity for the Italian industrial fabric, capable of generating a competitive supply chain” in Italy.
Hydrogen – especially the "green" one, obtained using electricity from renewable sources and zero emissions – is being talked about a lot as a clean fuel for the decarbonisation of industrial processes with high energy consumption (the so – called hard-to -abate , such as the steel industry), but also as a source-refuge for the storage of renewable energy that can compensate for the intermittent generation of renewable sources.
By 2030, the European Union wants to install electrolysers – that is, machinery for the production of green hydrogen – for at least 40 gigawatts of capacity, which will make it possible to obtain 10 million tons of green hydrogen.
Excluding the major players, Intesa Sanpaolo's Studies and Research Department reports about 120 Italian companies active in the hydrogen sector, for a total turnover of 7 billion euros and 19 thousand employees in 2019.
They are mostly small or medium-sized companies (40 percent have less than 10 million in turnover), which
they operate mainly in the manufacturing sector (50 per cent) and are committed to innovation (about 2600 patents filed).
According to the study, there are "signals for the creation of systems for the local production and use of green hydrogen in Italy (the green corridor of Brenner, the Valle Camonica train, the hydrogen hub of Marghera, the di Ravenna) which suggest the emergence of new industrial opportunities for local ecosystems ".
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/italia-tecnologie-rinnovabili-idrogeno-intesa-sanpaolo/ on Fri, 18 Jun 2021 08:20:40 +0000.