Italy chases gas hub status while climate plan draws fire

Italy is trying to run in two directions at once. The government in Rome has signed up to the European Union's binding target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 percent by 2030, compared with 1990 levels. At the same time, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's administration is determined to turn Italy into a gas hub for the Mediterranean, deepening the country's ties to fossil fuel infrastructure for decades to come. Researchers and non-governmental organisations have already flagged the contradiction, criticising Italy's draft plan for reaching those 2030 targets as too vague on phasing out oil, coal and gas, and too thin on expanding wind and solar power.

The gas hub ambition

Meloni's vision of Italy as a Mediterranean gas hub is not new, but it has sharpened since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 upended European energy markets. Italy had been heavily reliant on Russian pipeline gas, importing roughly 40 percent of its supply from Moscow before the war. The crisis forced a rapid diversification: Algeria, Qatar and the United States, via liquefied natural gas shipments, all stepped in to fill the gap. Italy's existing infrastructure, including LNG regasification terminals and the Trans-Mediterranean Pipeline from Algeria, gave it a head start over neighbours with less import capacity.

The logic of the hub strategy is straightforward. Italy sits between the gas fields of North Africa and the energy-hungry markets of central Europe. New pipeline connections, such as the planned extension linking Italy to southern Germany, could turn the country into a transit corridor as well as a consumer. Eni, the Italian energy major, has been expanding its presence in North Africa, signing new exploration and supply agreements with Libya, Algeria and Egypt. The Italian state holds a significant stake in Eni, giving Rome both a commercial and a strategic interest in the company's overseas activities.

The problem is timing. Gas infrastructure built or expanded now is designed to operate for 20 to 30 years. Locking in that capacity sits uncomfortably alongside Italy's commitment to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, and the intermediate 2030 target. Gas may burn cleaner than coal, but it still releases carbon dioxide when combusted, and methane leaks along the supply chain can erase much of that advantage. The International Energy Agency has warned that no new fossil fuel development is consistent with reaching net zero by mid-century. The IEA's country profile for Italy tracks the gap between current trajectory and climate goals.

A draft plan that dodges the hard choices

Under EU law, every member state must submit a National Energy and Climate Plan, or NECP, detailing how it intends to meet the bloc's 2030 targets for emissions reduction, renewable energy share and energy efficiency. Italy submitted an initial plan in 2019 and was required to submit an updated draft by June 2023, with a final version due later. The European Commission assesses each plan against the overall targets and can issue recommendations if a member state's proposals fall short.

Researchers and NGOs have already identified weaknesses in Italy's draft. The plan is said to be vague on the specific timelines and policy instruments needed to phase out oil, coal and gas. It also lacks detail on how Italy intends to expand wind and solar capacity fast enough to close the gap between current deployment and the 2030 renewables target. Italy has made progress on solar photovoltaic installations, particularly on rooftops, but has lagged on onshore wind, partly because of slow permitting and local opposition. Offshore wind, which could harness the country's extensive coastline, remains at an early stage.

The criticism is not merely procedural. If Italy's NECP lacks credible policies for fossil fuel phaseout and renewable expansion, the Commission can push Rome to strengthen its proposals. But the political reality is that the Meloni government, which took office in October 2022, came to power with a coalition programme that emphasised energy security and affordability over the speed of the green transition. The League and Forza Italia, Meloni's junior coalition partners, have both been vocal defenders of gas infrastructure and sceptical of rapid decarbonisation.

Where Italy's energy transition stands

Italy has not been standing still. Over the past decade, the country has expanded its renewable electricity generation, particularly solar, and has closed several coal-fired power plants. Geothermal energy in Tuscany and hydroelectric capacity in the Alps give Italy a more diversified clean-energy base than many of its southern European neighbours. Enel, the Rome-based utility, is one of the world's largest operators of renewable generation, even if its home market has not always been the easiest place to build new projects.

Yet Italy remains deeply dependent on imported fossil fuels. It produces only a small fraction of the gas it consumes, and oil imports account for the vast majority of petroleum used in transport and industry. Eurostat's energy statistics show that Italy's import dependency ratio consistently exceeds 70 percent for all energy sources combined, well above the EU average. That vulnerability was exposed in 2022, when the cutoff of Russian gas sent Italian energy prices soaring and forced emergency conservation measures.

The gas hub strategy is, in part, a response to that vulnerability. By building more import capacity and transit infrastructure, Rome argues, Italy can guarantee supply security for itself and for central Europe. Critics counter that the same investment, directed into renewables, storage and grid upgrades, would reduce import dependency altogether rather than simply rerouting it.

The Social Climate Plan

One element added to Italy's transition framework is the Social Climate Plan, a requirement under the EU's Social Climate Fund. That fund, established alongside the Emissions Trading System for buildings and road transport, is designed to cushion the impact of carbon pricing on vulnerable households and small businesses. Member states must submit a Social Climate Plan to access their share of the fund, which totals roughly 86 billion euro across the EU for the period 2026 to 2032.

Italy, with its relatively low average incomes and high share of energy-poor households, stands to receive a significant allocation. How the Social Climate Plan is structured will determine whether the money reaches those most exposed to rising energy costs, or whether it gets absorbed into broader budgetary spending. The plan's integration into the wider NECP process is supposed to ensure that social considerations are not an afterthought, but experience with previous EU funding programmes in Italy suggests implementation is where things tend to go wrong.

Rome between Brussels and the Mediterranean

The Meloni government is not anti-renewable. It has not attempted to dismantle Italy's existing clean-energy subsidies or block new projects outright. But its priorities are clear. Gas infrastructure, energy security and price stability come first; the pace of decarbonisation comes second. That ordering has political logic in a country where energy costs weigh heavily on households and on energy-intensive industries such as ceramics, steel and chemicals, many of them concentrated in the industrial north.

The European Commission, for its part, must weigh how hard to push. Italy is the euro area's third-largest economy and a net contributor to the EU budget. A confrontation over climate targets would play into domestic politics in Rome, where Meloni's government has already shown a willingness to frame EU pressure as interference. At the same time, the Commission cannot simply accept a NECP that does not add up to the 2030 target without undermining its credibility with other member states that are making more ambitious plans.

The underlying question is whether gas infrastructure built now will prove to be a stranded asset in the 2040s, or whether it will serve as a bridge fuel that eases the transition. The answer depends on assumptions about the speed of hydrogen deployment, the availability of carbon capture technology, and the political willingness to shut down assets before the end of their economic life. None of those assumptions is certain, which is why the debate over Italy's energy future is as much about risk tolerance as it is about technology.