Italy profile

Overview

In 2017 the final energy consumption climate corrected was 121.1 Mtoe, -4.5% since 2000. The largest consuming sector was transport sector representing 31% of total final energy consumption with a 2.4 percentage points decrease since 2000. Over the period 2000-2017 services and residential sectors grew by 6 and 5.4 percentage points, respectively: the building sector, comprising residential and services sectors, represents around 43% of total final energy consumption in 2017. Energy consumption in industry kept on decreasing, -31,2% since 2000.

Energy efficiency for final consumers, as measured by ODEX, improved by an average of 1.1% per year from 2000 to 2017, 17% over the period. In industry the energy efficiency improvement has been steady and significant: 1.6% per year over the period 2000-2017. The progress in transport sector has been quite constant, 1.3% per year, accelerating in the last two years due to fast increase of passenger traffics compared to energy consumption. The residential sector had a steady progress in energy efficiency but smaller than in 1990s caused by the changes in lifestyle and dwelling comfort: 0.7% per year over the period 2000-2017.

Energy efficiency is one of the areas covered by NECP to enhance energy security, environmental protection, reduce energy costs for families and enterprises. The indicative target for 2030 is a reduction of 39.7% for final energy consumption, with a minimum target reduction in final consumption of 0.8% per year for the period 2021-2030 (Article 7 EED 2018). In absolute terms, Italy is pursuing a target of 103.8 Mtoe of final energy. The intention is to use a mix of fiscal, economic, regulatory and policy instruments and to integrate the energy efficiency into policies and measures with different purposes from efficiency in order to optimise cost-benefit ratio: the main instruments for the targets are White Certificates and incentives for energy renovation of existing buildings. 

Relative to the target for 2011-2020 set in 2014 NEEAP, and confirmed by National Energy Strategy 2017, in 2017 energy savings amounted to around 8 Mtoe/year of final energy (51.9% of the target): around 37% of savings derives from the White Certificates scheme. The White Certificates mechanism was updated by the Ministerial Decree of 11 January 2017, establishing the quantitative national energy savings targets for 2017-2020 and integrated by the Decree 10 May 2018.

Buildings

In 2017, the energy consumption of residential sector was around 34 Mtoe, +18% since 2000 (+1.0%/year). The space heating accounted for 69% of energy consumption followed by electrical appliances with 13%, water heating with 11%, cooking with 6% and air-cooling with 1%. The end-uses consumption had an increasing trend: +1.2%/year for space heating, +1.4%/year for cooking, +10%/year for air-cooling and +0.6%/year for electrical appliances. The percentage distribution of end-uses consumption was practically constant in the last 10 years. 

Energy consumption of electric appliances amounted to 0.18 toe/dwelling in 2017, -3% since 2000 and -10.8% since 2011, mainly due to progress in energy efficiency. 

Over the period 2000-2017 the energy consumption of residential building grew by 5.3 Mtoe. This increase was mainly due to two factors: more dwelling for 4.5 Mtoe, and greater comfort for 4.3 Mtoe (especially more appliances per dwelling). Energy savings have counterbalanced the effects of the energy consumption growth for 4.1 Mtoe.

The energy consumption per employee in the service sector grew significantly in 2017 due to consumption of ambient heat, not accounted in the previous years. The electricity consumption per employee grew by 2.4%/year over the period 2000-2017 mainly due to significant increase in electricity consumption of health services since 2011: for the other branches the unit consumption grew until 2010 and then decreased.

The Budget Law 2019 extended 65% tax deductions for energy requalification of existing buildings (Ecobonus) and 50% fiscal deductions for building renovations (Bonus Casa) until 31 December 2019. 

The Decree of 3 October 2018 assigns 321 million euros to the Regions for financing extraordinary maintenance works for public residential housing. The interventions are up to a maximum of 50,000 euros per dwelling and must relate to the housing renovation in order to reducing energy consumption and anti-seismic adaptation. 

The Energy and Development Complementary Operational Program for the territories 2014-2020 (CIPE resolution n.20 / 2018) is financed for 120 million euros, divided into two sections: Energy and Technical Assistance. The Energy section provides two lines of action: the first is dedicated to eco-efficiency and reduction of primary energy consumption of buildings, the installation of remote control systems, regulation and optimization of energy consumption and pollutant emissions. The second line concerns the creation of intelligent networks, the installation of devices equipped with digital communication systems in cities and urban areas. 

Transport

Road transport, passengers and freight, is the main mode of transport with around 85% of transport energy consumption. In 2017 cars accounted for 43% of energy consumption, trucks and light vehicles for 36%. The remaining consumption was used by air transport (11%), motorcycles (4%), bus (3%), water (2%) and rail (1%).

The passenger traffic has been growing continuously since 2013 at average rate 4.3%/year, after the drop over the period 2007-2012. The share of cars is slightly decreasing, -3 percentage points, in favour of rail and air transport.

The freight traffic (measured in tonne-km) has been increasing in the last two years but it reduced by 17% (-1.1%/year) since 2000. This drop over the period 2000-2017 is driven by the significant decrease in road goods traffic (-2.5%/year), especially since 2011, and in rail traffic (-0.7%/year). On the contrary, water goods traffic is increasing, +3.5%/year.

Over the period 2000-2017, the transport energy consumption reduced by 4.8 Mtoe (-11.1%). This trend was due to a growth due to increasing passenger traffic (1.3 Mtoe) counterbalanced by energy savings (-11.1 Mtoe), modal shift (-2.1 Mtoe). Other effects, mainly the fall in load factors for the traffic of goods, led to an increase in the consumption (7.1 Mtoe).

The Budget Law 2019 for the period 1 March 2019-31 December 2021 provides incentives for purchase of cars with emissions lower than 70 gCO2/km, up to € 50,000 of cost and with scrapping of Euro 1, 2, 3 and 4 cars. 

The National Strategic Plan for Sustainable Mobility sets 3.7 billion euros in the period 2019-2033 to renewal bus fleet: with low environmental impact buses: electric, hydrogen and methane. It’s also planned to allocate at least 34% of the economic resources in the South Italy. 

In 2018, the incentives for the purchase of LGN, hybrid or electric goods vehicles were renewed. The economic resources amount to 18.6 million euros for vehicles with at least 3.5 tons useful load. 

Industry

Over the period 2000-2017 the energy consumption of industry , including blast furnace consumption, reduced by 2.2%/year, from 40.5 Mtoe in 2000 to 27.9 Mtoe in 2017. The share of energy intensive branches (chemicals, steel, non-metallic, non-ferrous and paper) decreased by 7.5 percentage points. Blast furnaces weigh is around 8% until 2014, then drop to 5% in 2017.

The unit consumption of steel, including blast furnace consumption, decreased by 2.3%/year over the period 2000-2017, with some “negative” years due to non-used production capacity due to the economic crisis. The unit consumption of cement reduced by 1.3%/year: it remains quite stable over the period 2008-2013 and then it has been decreasing.

The decrease in the energy consumption of industry, including blast furnace consumption, was 12.7 Mtoe (-31%) over the period 2000-2017. The drop was mainly driven by energy savings (-9.7 Mtoe) and the decrease in activity due to the economic crisis and recession (-7.6 Mtoe).

Industry 4.0 National Plan (now in Transition 4.0 Plan) supports private investments for technological and digital transformation of production processes. Hyper-depreciation, super-depreciation and new Sabatini law allow to purchase new machinery to innovate production lines, reducing energy consumption. Estimated savings for 2018 is 0.44 Mtoe of final energy. 

At 31 December 2018 16,105 energy audits from 8,870 companies were transmitted to ENEA. Potential savings from audits in manufacturing (45%) are 0.7 Mtoe/year: about 7,300 interventions with payback time of at most 3 years and 580 million euros of investment.