Chief Executive Officer and General Manager, Iren
Gianluca Bufo, Amministratore Delegato, Iren Mercato
About Gianluca Bufo
Gianluca Bufo, Chief Executive Officer and General Manager of Iren, stated that a single unpaid bill eliminates the margin generated by ten families' bills over a year. He made the remark while discussing the financial pressures on utility companies and the need for efficient cost management. Bufo also noted that companies investing in regulated sectors such as water and waste treatment are granted a return of approximately 6% to 7%, and must maintain efficient operating costs while seeking annual reductions. He made these comments during an interview about Iren’s history and the challenges of managing a multi-utility company.
Transcript (5 segments)
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Host0:00
That participating in this event will certainly allow us to set the stage. I won't say who it is, you'll see later. I would call to the table, or rather remotely, because he should be there on the move, Gianluca Bufo, CEO of Iren. Why Iren? Because Iren has been a big supporter of this event, and because it represents somewhat a new player in mobility. Because we always think of mobility as local public transport, etcetera, but Iren does a series of things that in the mobility of 2023 and even more in 2033 are fundamental. So it seems right to ask him to make a brief opening speech to give a sense of the change and also of the actors that do not disappear, old ones are joined by new ones, and in my opinion this is extremely positive because they are also new ways of seeing the sector. I give him the floor.
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Gianluca Bufo1:20
First of all, thank you all and welcome to those in the room and I also see some friends among those connected remotely. I appreciated the kind words that introduced me, which already give a bit of the meaning of the idea for these few minutes at the opening of the works. As Iren, we committed ourselves about four years ago to a vision and an entry into the electric mobility sector. First of all because we are talking about something that is coherent with our positioning, our DNA, our history. We are obviously talking about technology, about relationships with customers and territories, about ESG values that have always distinguished the group, even more so in our vision to 2030. And in these four years we have done many things. The approach we followed has been holistic, because I believe that electric mobility required, both four years ago and still today with a bit of market delay especially on the consumer side, a holistic approach. We got busy across all our territories, then in Turin I believe our attention has been most concentrated, also given a good combination with a vision that the city has expressed, coherent with our intentions.
We got busy on all those axes that characterize electric mobility today: on the installation of charging stations, we chose a presence on public soil but also on private soil with public access or in that private environment that has already distinguished many customers in installing themselves at their homes. We tried to lead by example by changing about two-thirds of our fleet of cars or vans or handling vehicles. Iren has a very large fleet, we are talking about hundreds and hundreds of vehicles. For some years now they have been electric, we are finishing those that are traditional fuel vehicles, with an experience lived by our own employees in carrying out their functions and in recharging the vehicle at our company parking lots. We also wanted to experiment with those frontiers, I saw you will talk about them in a dedicated session: sharing mobility. For us, sharing and city services distinguish our positioning. Right in Turin we launched, already many, with the friends of Allora and Mimoto or more recently with the friends of Dots, scooter and electric scooter services, and we continue to cross with a catalog of service offers the retail clientele also on light electric mobility. Or solutions that are the fruit of our experience we also bring to companies in changing their vehicle fleet or managing their fleets or charging availability in their parking lots.
There is a last frontier that we are tackling, I must say, in the last 18 months, these days are particularly dear and focused on the city of Turin: the electrification of local public transport. GTT made an important choice, launched a tender, we are participating in all three lots, and we believe that this is also a way to bring that financial and technological capacity, to build relationships that have already distinguished all the initiatives of e-mobility. This, I believe, can be somewhat the recipe we continue to carry forward. Because e-mobility is a transformation that will touch many elements, there are many dots to connect, many sectors and many industries, also a very active dialogue with territories, with regulatory bodies, and with all stakeholders that today can represent an interest in the world of electric mobility transformation. And we believe that this holistic 360-degree approach is the right recipe to avoid being too anchored to a dilemma that we continue to see: first the charging stations or first the vehicles? Which surely someone has already resolved, because there are many more charging stations than vehicles present today in all of Italy. Then someone says there are still insufficient charging stations. In reality, it is a holistic approach where the many dots to be connected somewhat contain that secret of our success, of our positioning: to be at the service of something that many years ago was a meter to bring gas or electricity into the homes of cities that were beginning to live and expand. Today it is the broader themes of energy transformation and positioning on renewable sources, but which see e-mobility as an extraordinary chapter of attention within us, because things are moving, there are many things to move, but when the consumer sector with electric cars truly positioned on the world of us Italians will also start, the acceleration will be so fast and so radical that it is better to be prepared in time. And I can only wish you good work.
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Host7:22
And you proceeded, thank you Doctor. It was explained well what it means to be a new mobility operator: it means precisely thinking in terms of services, perhaps in collaboration with others, it means being able to provide an infrastructure of this new unit that at this moment is apparently the electric road. We will move on to our round table because, as we said, and this also looked at the transition, Greece instead.