Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi has acknowledged climate change as a major issue and has created a superministry to ensure a transition to green energy drives recovery in the country. This superministry will ensure full use of European Union funds.
Key Points
- The prime minister’s first job will be to redraft the Recovery Plan of the country, which must be handed to the European Commission by April to get more than $240 billion (200 billion euros) of funds needed to revive the recession-hit economy.
- As per the EU agreement, 37% of the fund amount must be dedicated to the transition to a low carbon economy.
- Physicist Roberto Cingolani has been chosen as the head of the new ecology transition ministry.
- The new ministry has helped to win over Italy’s 5-Star Movement but had faced internal strife over the prospect of joining a cabinet containing its political foes.
- Some 5-Star members were not happy that the new ministry will only absorb the energy arm of the industry ministry and not the rest, which includes business crisis resolution and international trade.
In December 2020, EU leaders agreed to bring down their net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% from 1990 levels by the year 2030 from the present target of 40%. This creates a pressure on Italy to overhaul the energy plan introduced by it last year calling for renewables to make up 30% of final energy consumption by the year 2030, from 17% in 2019, and for the green capacity to rise to 95 gigawatts from 55 GW.