Energy in Italy

Among the most used resources are petroleum (mostly used for the transport sector), natural gas (used for electric energy production and heating), coal and renewables.

[6] The Val d'Agri area, Basilicata, hosts the largest onshore hydrocarbon field in Europe.

[7] Moderate natural gas reserves, mainly in the Po Valley and offshore Adriatic Sea, have been discovered in recent years and constitute an important mineral resource.

[11] Renewable sources account for the 27.5% of all electricity produced in Italy, with hydro alone reaching 12.6%, followed by solar at 5.7%, wind at 4.1%, bioenergy at 3.5%, and geothermal at 1.6%.

[12] The rest of the national demand is covered by fossil fuels (38.2% natural gas, 13% coal, 8.4% oil) and by imports.

[14] With these agreements, Italy has managed to access nuclear power and direct involvement in design, construction, and operation of the plants without placing reactors on Italian territory.

[14] In the rankings published by the International Energy Agency, Italy appears among the top ten countries in the world for several of the indicators: Italy's fossil fuel reserves are modest, but its renewable energy potential is significant, especially for hydro and solar.

The Venice biorefinery, the world's first refinery converted to vegetable sources in 2014, has a biodiesel production capacity of 360,000 tonnes /year from used cooking oils and palm oil; this capacity will be increased to 420,000 tonnes/year in 2021, to which will be added the Gela biorefinery (600,000 tonnes/year).

The Transitgas Pipeline, inaugurated in 2008, connects the gas market in northwestern Europe with Italy.

It leaves from the Greek-Turkish border and crosses Greece, Albania and the Adriatic Sea to arrive in Italy.

[35] Final energy consumption (after refining, transformation into electricity or district heating, transport, etc.)

It was divided into 73, 2% fossil fuels (1.7% coal, 41.8% oil, 29.7% natural gas), 7.0% thermal renewable energies and 19.8% electricity.

[10] District heating is widespread in central, eastern and northern Europe,[40] but since the early 1970s it has also begun to spread to Italy.

[45] The heat produced by cogeneration plants (94%) as well as by boiler rooms (6%) and distributed by district heating represented 174 PJ in 2019, or 3.5% of the country's final energy consumption, intended for 71% to industry, 21% to the residential sector and 7% to the tertiary sector.

[15] It was produced in 2020 from coal for 2.7%, oil for 12.9%, natural gas for 63.1%, biomass for 15.6%, waste for 5.3% and geothermal energy for 0.4%.