At the end of our panel. CEO, A2A is a national reality, but one that lives in this territory in particular. The general framework of the global crisis, the crisis of international law, places energy at the center of power dynamics. You, who lead one of the main national players, do you feel the weight of this paradigm shift also in the management of what was once a commodity, which instead today becomes a strategic asset?
Good evening. Good evening, everyone. You know, I was down in Naples, which is why I arrived late, uh, at an event that was exactly called 'Paradigm Shift', and where they discussed uh also a lot about these topics. Um, so first of all, to reconcile myself a bit with what Giorgio was saying, certainly the energy issue has always been a central issue on the planet. Any economic development needs energy. Uh, and Europe, we know, has relied for many years on gas, and Italy in particular. Other countries are not in this situation. Um, so to begin with, we must keep in mind that we consume electricity only for 20% of our uses. So, in the storytelling of these last periods, uh when one speaks even simply with any of our fellow citizens about energy, they immediately think of electricity. In reality, the bill of any family is made up of about €4,000 of energy costs, €1,800 for gasoline in the car, €1,300 for gas to heat the house, and €800 for electricity to run the lights, washing machine, air conditioner, computer, and of these, about half are taxes and various system charges. This is to say that we are still largely tied to fossil fuels for all mobility and for a good part of other uses.
To truly free ourselves from this, being a country that has no fossil fuel, so for example we are one of the most widely electrified countries in railways in the world since forever, because at the end of the 1800s we didn't have the coal that they had instead in Germany or England, and so we said okay, let's use hydroelectric and run our steel mills in northern Italy with electric furnaces and electric trains, because it was the only source we had. Let's say that the art of getting by in Italy, and here in particular in this region, in these territories, has always been particularly effective, and so also the circularity between energy that was renewable by its very nature, hydroelectric, and important uses from transport to production have always been very circular with each other. Then at a certain point we decided to rely on gas, so you all remember, right? Methane gives us a hand, that was the 80s and 90s. So the growth, all the economic growth that occurred from that point onwards was done with the gas network. Gas came from Russia predominantly at low costs, but not very low, now I'll give you two interesting data points. And so the large gas networks were born. It was the 70s and 80s when gas arrived in the condominium, everyone connected, there was celebration, and all the increases in industrial, civil, and energy uses were all satisfied with gas. So much so that our electricity network remained at the 1970s level because we practically developed it from the post-war period until the mid-1970s. From then on, all investments went into gas. Then at a certain point two things happen. The first is that we begin to understand that the planet won't last long if we don't decarbonize, and so COP 21 and all the great national European decarbonization plans start, not only. And so we begin to say we need to electrify more, and then of course the war. Consider that when the war started, we bought gas from Russia at 14-15 per MWh, just remember the number, 14-15. And the gas we now take from the United States we pay less for, but it costs us more. That is, today we pay €11 per MWh against the 14-15 we paid from Russia, so quite a bit less in percentage, 25% less.
But gas from Russia came via pipes, pipelines, uh the famous ones, no stream? Do you remember right after the war that our pipeline was sabotaged? We don't know if it was the Ukrainians, the Russians, who it was. Even today it's not well understood. Anyway, in essence, there were pipes that brought gas to Europe. It arrived via Tarvisio and the cost of transport by pipe, once you've built the pipe, is very low, that is, you spent €3 per MWh, so 14 + 3, 15 + 3, 18. Now we, even at A2A, buy gas in the United States because it is the market where it costs less and is more stable, let's say. The alternative would be Qatar to understand, and we pay 11, except that unfortunately all of you want to use it here, not in the United States. And so it has to be liquefied and it costs a lot energetically to liquefy. It costs €13 per MWh, that is, I buy it for 11, liquefy it for 13, then I have to transport it by ship across the ocean, I spend another 3.5, and then it arrives at the famous regasification plants in Ravenna and Piombino, which everyone knows we built in a hurry for regasification, we spend another 2.5. End of story: €20? No, 10? 11 I pay, 20 I need to transport it here, while before I paid 14-15 and 3 to transport it. Result: before it cost 18, now it costs 30, and moreover these costs are totally incompressible because they are operating costs, that is, I don't know how to say, it's not...
I mean, the market maybe can make the 11 go to 10 or 9, but it doesn't change anything, in the end it costs 30. So that means we are at this point, given the energy mix of gas, of countries in Europe that use gas, consider that Europe is organized in this way: some countries that are all renewable, Sweden, Norway, Spain, uh so they cover almost the entire need with renewables. Then we have nuclear countries, France first and foremost, and then we have countries that work with gas, basically Italy, Germany, some Eastern countries. So we are divided into these three groups. So in reality the large countries truly exposed to gas are only us and Germany plus a few other countries, and so we are no longer freeing ourselves from this situation now, in the sense that the price of gas is this, and since a part of energy is still made with gas, it ends up that more or less energy costs are stably at this level. They create a problem in terms of development. This correlation between energy price and development. When we had gas, so I'm talking 2017 at €15 per MWh, Italy's GDP was lower than today. We had not become the fourth largest exporters on the planet in recent years. We surpassed Korea and Japan. Today in terms of exports, Italy does 600 billion in exports, because every now and then we also tell ourselves something positive, right? So in strength, in supremacy, first exporter in the world the United States, second China, third Germany, fourth Italy. So in an energy scenario where energy costs a lot, we managed to overtake Japan and Korea. Not bad. So there is not a linear correlation. Certainly if energy costs less, better, we are all happy, but I mean there are many other elements on competitiveness that we must consider. Uh, what do we need to do to become independent from gas? Develop the only indigenous sources we have in Italy: wind, sun, water, and waste, which are...
