Observatory
13 June 2024

Energy transition is a collective responsibility and public administration has a key role to play

It is estimated that 10 per cent of the national real estate stock, about 300 million sqm, concerns the public administration. An enormous potential.

The public administration sector can make a significant contribution to closing the gaps that still make Europe's decarbonisation and energy efficiency targets distant.
 
A 2014 study by GSE and RSE (the only one for which data is available) called ‘The Energy Consumption of the Public Administration - Estimated Consumption and Energy Requalification Scenarios’ reported the electrical and thermal consumption of PA buildings and public lighting, broken down by sector and by Italian region. It is safe to say that the PA is energy intensive: annual consumption is 1.62 Mtoe electric and 2.94 Mtoe thermal, for a total of 4.6 Mtoe per year. Of the total electricity consumption, 33.26% is absorbed by public lighting, 23% by the central PA and defence aggregate, 15.82% by education, 14.14% by health and 13.78% by leisure and sports activities. Transport was excluded from the study. 
 
 
The PNIEC, Piano Nazionale Integrato per l'Energia e il Clima (National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan), is a tool provided by the European Union to define the policies and measures to be adopted by Italy to achieve long-term energy and climate objectives. The target set in 2020 is to energetically retrain at least 3 per cent per year of the usable covered surface area of the public building stock. But this threshold is still far off. According to ENEA - the national agency for new technologies, energy and sustainable development - the rate does not reach 2 per cent.
The issue was examined in the study ‘Roadmap to 2030: scenarios and policy indications in the light of the new decarbonisation targets’ conducted by the Politecnico di Milano and presented last March at the conference ‘Efficient Transition: new solutions for the energy of the future’, promoted by Engie Italia and Il Sole 24 Ore in Milan. The study shows how increasing the target set by the PNIEC from 3 to 4 per cent would yield important results in terms of efficiency and upgrading. With an increase in investment, the savings in bills for the public administration are evident, rising from EUR 225 million per year to EUR 300 million.
 
 Target upgradingEfficiencyRedevelopmentInvestmentSaving on bills
Current target3% Tot mq/anno-1,1 Twh/anno9 mln mq/anno4-9 mld€/anno225 mln€/anno
Accelerated target4% Tot mq/anno1,5 Twh/anno12 mln mq/anno6-12 mld€/anno300 mln€/anno
Result+1% Tot mq/anno+0,4 Twh/anno+3 mln mq/anno2-3 mld€/anno+75 mln€/anno
 
Public administration, therefore, is an important area on which to intervene. It is a matter of expanding efficiency objectives through more ambitious redevelopment targets that leverage private capital and skills. The proposal is to review incentive systems and public procurement logics that are aimed in particular at:
-      Support the dissemination, also jointly, of actions such as Energy Performance Contracts (EPC) and Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) aimed at:
            ·     Encourage the adoption of EPC contracts economically by introducing a tax deduction or providing the possibility of hyper-depreciation for installed assets;
            ·     Offer financial incentives for PPP-type collaborations through the establishment of a fund to finance part of PA investments made in the form of PPPs.
-      Revise procurement processes by favouring evaluation mechanisms based on the efficiency and decarbonisation capacity of different technologies.
 
Competence and private capital, therefore, are indicated as levers to make public assets more efficient and to accelerate a process that without the renewal of the public administration risks coming to a standstill, making the objectives of the European Green Deal a chimera.
 
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Energy saving in schools: a concrete example.
 
In 2019, the municipality of Montemurlo (PO) carried out a relamping operation, i.e. it replaced 308 old-generation lighting fixtures with high-efficiency Beghelli LED lighting fixtures in the Anna Frank primary school. Thanks to this solution, every year it saves over 15 thousand euro in electricity bills and reduces CO2 emissions into the atmosphere by 36 tonnes. The average reduction in energy consumption was 77.3% compared to the past, with peaks of 80%.