2019. A YEAR OF CHANGE

by Francesco Calabretta – Country Manager Italy, Audax Energia

“Six themes for the energy of the future”. I would add the adjective "next" to the word "future" in the title of our 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 on which to invest intellectual and material resources. Topics on which we in the Audax Group - starting with president José Elías - wanted to reflect and explore.

Issues full of positive or strongly negative consequences depending on the type of approach and choices that we human beings - as individuals and citizens of national bodies - are called upon to take both today and in the coming years.

Meanwhile, the year that is about to end has seen important changes. The transformation and novelty certainly do not lie 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 legitimation 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 in particular). Or, again, the push for renewables by governments and private citizens (and no longer just 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 developing at the end of the year could open up new scenarios.

As we said, the innovation concerned above all 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 (just remember that 27 years have passed since the first climate conference in Rio de Janeiro...) never before this 2019, the environmental problem, from the aspects of climate change and sustainable development, it has reached so many people and so deeply. This 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 touched 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 us who operate in the energy sector, the degree 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 capable of providing concrete answers. Real solutions, within everyone's reach, convenient, easily adoptable: change, the real one, the widespread one, comes through here.

The second has to do with our Group, with what we do and how we do it. Audax Renovables – as the name already indicates – and the other Audaxes in Europe work to provide clean and renewable energy coming both from owned plants and from other producers. This occurs through so-called PPAs (Power Purchase Agreements), 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 its potential and, therefore, to take advantage of it.

Innovation, sustainability and high quality standards in service, in Spain as in Italy. Just 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 pushed us to choose to supply only natural gas "climate neutral”. A decision which, without burdening users, promotes access to energy for those populations who 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 Nations United.

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 hope for 2020? May the desire for transformation that emerged in 2019 not be exhausted. We, for our part, will work to ensure this does not happen.

Enjoy the reading!

(Introduction from eBook “2019. Six themes for the energy of the future. Food for thought on a changing world”)

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