2019. A YEAR OF CHANGE

by Francesco Calabretta – Country Manager Italy, Audax Energia

“Six themes for the energy of the future”. I would put the adjective “next” before the word “future” in the title of this eBook. In fact, electric mobility, renewables, gas, access to safe and sustainable energy, cyber security and the free market are probably among the most relevant issues in which to invest intellectual and material resources. Issues on which we at the Audax Group – starting with the president José Elías – wanted to reflect and explore in depth.

Issues fraught with positive or strongly negative consequences depending on the type of approach and choices that we human beings – as individuals and citizens of national organizations – are called to make both today and in the coming years.

In the meantime, the year that is about to end has seen important changes. The transformation and the novelty are certainly not in “our” six themes – obviously already known – but in the fact that in these last twelve months they have finally obtained attention and sometimes a legitimacy that they had never had before.

Let's think about the importance that cybersecurity is assuming in energy infrastructures. Or the push that car manufacturers are giving to alternative forms of motorization (hybrid first and foremost). Or, again, the push for renewables by governments and private citizens (and not only in the "usual" and virtuous countries of Northern Europe). That among the many promises, something is moving? The impressive environmental policy - Green Deal - that the new European Commission is finalizing right at the end of this year could open up new scenarios.

As mentioned, the novelty has mainly concerned the widespread awareness of the need for change. Although the greenhouse effect, pollution and the need to find alternative energy solutions have been discussed for many decades (it is enough to remember that 27 years have passed since the first climate conference in Rio de Janeiro...) never before in 2019 has the environmental problem, in terms of climate change and sustainable development, reached so many people and so deeply. This has happened both thanks to issues that are easier to understand because they are tangible, such as the waste emergency - especially plastic - and to other more "abstract" and long-term issues, such as the rise in temperature.

An awareness that has also affected Italy. As emerges from ainvestigation of the REF Research Institute, as many as 8 out of 10 Italians know that climate change exists and is a phenomenon generated by human activity.

For those of us who operate in the energy sector, the level of involvement in these issues is profound.

First of all, for the responsibility that – in different forms – we have in finding and making available to users solutions that can provide concrete answers. Real solutions, within everyone’s reach, convenient, easily adoptable: change, the real one, the widespread one, passes through here.

The second has to do with our Group, with what we do and how we do it. Audax Renovables – as the name suggests – and the other Audax companies in Europe work precisely to provide clean and renewable energy from both owned plants and from other producers. This happens through the so-called PPA (Power Purchase Agreement), long-term energy purchase agreements – in our case photovoltaic. An innovative system for marketing – to domestic and business users – energy from renewable sources at economically convenient rates and of which Audax was among the first companies to understand the potential and, therefore, to take advantage of it.

Innovation, sustainability and high quality standards in service, in Spain as in Italy. Right at the beginning of 2019 we signed a first PPA in Basilicata for 20 MW of photovoltaic energy power. A first project that will be followed by others that we are working on, for a total of 400 MW.

The same reasons led us to choose to supply only natural gas"climate neutral”. A decision that, without burdening users, promotes access to energy for those populations that are still excluded and contributes to supporting initiatives of socio-environmental value in emerging areas of the Planet, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.

The “Smart Energy” initiative, inaugurated in October, completes the picture. It is an offer of value-added services and technological and sustainable solutions dedicated to energy efficiency, health and electric mobility.

A wish for 2020? That the desire for transformation that emerged in 2019 does not run out. We, for our part, will work to ensure that this does not happen.

Happy reading!

(Introduction from eBook “2019. Six Themes for the Energy of the Future. Food for Thought on a Changing World”)

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