What are the actions to enhance the role of Italian agriculture and to improve the agroecological transition? Piero Gattoni, President of the CIB – Consorzio Italiano Biogas, says what is needed in Italy at the moment.
In Italy, the PNRR – Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza represents a great opportunity for agricultural companies to pursue sustainability goals. It might help to improve the competitiveness, reducing emissions, responding with structural measures to the problems related to the correct management of livestock effluents while improving the soil fertility.
Moreover, "the conversion of existing biogas plants could provide 3.5 billion SMC in biomethane production and could be of interest in private investment of about 5 billion euros - says Piero Gattoni, CIB President. Agricultural biomethane development can also count on a positive impact, including employment increase of about 16,000 employees, to which must be added an increase of the indirect ones, about 70-80 thousand employees".
Finally, for the agricultural sector biomethane potentialities would make it possible to solve the multifunctionality of farms, to avoid the abandonment of rural areas and to actively contribute to the fight against the soils desertification and hydrogeological failure. The drive towards the modernization of companies and innovative technologies will allow more sustainable agri-food productions, favouring the competitiveness of "Made in Italy” products.
New opportunities
The PNRR – Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza might be an opportunity to direct investments in Italian agricultural and agro-industrial supply chain projects. President Gattoni states the results of the "Farming for Future. 10 azioni per coltivare il futuro" report by CIB – Consorzio Italiano Biogas. In the Farming for Future project, which is based on the new international and European guidelines that see anaerobic digestion as a tool for reducing emissions, a roadmap has been advanced to plan long-term agro-industrial development projects. The results show that thanks to appropriate actions and technologies, direct emissions from agriculture can be reduced by 32%.
What actions are needed in Italy?
- Do not waste the current agricultural investments;
- To simplify existing projects;
- To encourage the use of biomethane, extending it to all sectors which are difficult to electrify.
Gattoni concludes: "We hope that the Parliament could propose the Government the goodness of biomethane to give a development perspective to our agricultural enterprises and a decisive push towards the circular economy, to reduce the overall environmental impact".
