Affari e Finanza – January 2017

Energy, coal comes back to a surprise

Sometimes they come back. When no one could have imagined seeing them arrive at the docks. It is the coal-laden ships that are docking in Italian ports to supply the power plants. Nothing special, on the surface. In fact, that cargo of coal is going to supply power plants already given for closures and which are being rekindled to cope with a request for “help” coming from France, whose nuclear power plants (21 out of 58) are stationary in maintenance, and which therefore urgently needs to import energy to meet its domestic needs. And so, more than the real scale of the phenomenon, it is the reopening of plants that have always been in the crosshairs of environmentalists and citizens’ committees that elicits mixed reactions. An emergency that was supposed to last only a few months, but which has been going on since last October.