Bocconi and the European Commission Working Together to Discuss Energy and Climate
European choices on the issues of sustainable development, liberalization and the integration of technological innovation markets have a growing impact on national and local public decisions and create the basis for policies to revive competitiveness in the EU. The target of 20-20-20, possible only through an integrated energy market, are at the center of the new 2020 European strategy for the recovery of growth and employment.
To confront these issues, IEFE Bocconi and the European Commission have created the "Forum on European Policy for Energy, the Environment and Competitiveness", a series of closed-door meetings which will include experts, institutional representatives and stakeholders. The Forum was presented today at Bocconi, by Rector Guido Tabellini and the Vice President of the European Commission, Antonio Tajani, during the first meeting focusing on the future of the electricity market.
"Our University and the European Commission have launched this forum," said Tabellini, "with the conviction that these issues have by now taken on an importance which lies outside industry borders, with important repercussions on the European industrial structure. Objectives for a sustainable energy system today require answers with a global outlook and long-term policies for intervention. In addition, any path chosen to ensure the sustainable development of energy systems should not overlook issues of fair trade and environmental impact which global energy choices and climate change may have on developing countries. The Forum is offered as a tool to contribute effectively to addressing and governing evolutionary processes in progress thanks to opportunities for exchange and debate between the various stakeholders."
"We are facing a true industrial revolution, comparable to that of the second half of the 19th century tied to several inventions such as the steam engine," said Tajani. "Like then, this current, gradual relinquishing of carbon and oil is based on R&D and innovation. At stake are emerging markets and the creation of hundreds of thousands of new skilled jobs. The 251 billion dollars invested in 2010, double that of 2008 in spite of the crisis, and the affirmation of China as the new leader of green energy with 51 billion dollars of investment and the country overtaking the Americas and Europe, give us an idea of the competition that has begun for the leadership of green tech. EU industrial policy aims to defend this leadership starting with the creation of a true European energy market." Recalling the conclusions of the first European Council on energy on 4 February, Tajani also added that, "a strong political desire to speed up the opening and integration of the market has emerged, to be completed by 2014. With fundamental consequences for EU competitiveness, including lower energy bills for businesses, access to networks of renewable suppliers, the development of smart grids and electric cars, increased security of supplies and creating new jobs."
The presentation of the Forum was also an opportunity to launch its works: the focus of this first encounter was the future of the electricity market, starting with evidence emerging from the IEFE Bocconi report "The Generation of Electric Energy in Italy 10 Years After the Bersani Decree" and the deliberation of the stage of fast evolution which today characterizes the electric sectors, an evolution which could wreak havoc on the organizational model of liberalization adopted at the moment.