Agriculture can play a very important role in the future of energy production. This was the focus of remarks by Enel CEO Francesco Starace at the National Assembly of Confagricoltura (the General Confederation of Italian Agriculture) entitled “People, Agriculture, Environment”, which was held on December 14 at Villa Aurelia in Rome.
“In the past, energy production was centralized: energy was produced in a power station, and was distributed through an electric cable system. Consumers were passive subjects in this scenario. These days, many consumers, particularly in agriculture, have more space available and will be able to play an increasingly active role in producing energy and in monitoring and managing their consumption.”
Enel is part of this process, with the ambitious goal of “making tools available that make it possible to use agriculture for energy purposes in a simple, safe and economically sustainable way,” to quote Starace. This commitment would lead to “reduced energy costs, increased capital gains and improvements in supply for the entire country.” Enel’s CEO also stressed that Confagricoltura was “among the first to believe in this potential”
“There are many things we can do together. Our commitment is to make them possible, safe and economically sound”
Francesco Starace, Enel CEO
Speaking about clean energy, Francesco Starace focused on solar plants and the importance of producing panels in Italy: “We’ve decided to increase our production capacity 15-fold to 3 GW, making this production facility the largest in Europe. And we’re already considering doubling that, because demand is booming.” He is referring to the 3Sun Gigafactory in Catania, which is set to become Europe’s largest production facility for high-performance bifacial photovoltaic panels: “This is a much-needed factory. It will begin production in the third quarter of 2023 and will be fully operational 8 months later, in 2024.” In the meantime, Italy has already exceeded one million distributed production plants this year, as Francesco Starace recalled: “Italy will install about 2.2 GW of solar panels, up from only 800 MW last year. In all probability, we’ll exceed 4 GW next year.”
Enel editorial staff