Southern Italy at the center of the national energy debate: Occhiuto denounces the paradox of renewables in the South.
The Governor of Calabria intervenes in the Corriere della Sera and relaunches the issue of zonal prices as a lever to attract investments.
The topic of energy transition is returning to the center of the national political agenda with renewed vigor. Roberto Occhiuto, President of the Calabria Region and deputy national secretary of Forza Italia, gave an interview to Corriere della Sera in which he highlighted a structural paradox that penalizes the South: the regions of Southern Italy produce more renewable energy than the rest of the country, yet they do not benefit from it in terms of household and business energy bills.
The mechanism underlying this distortion is well known to industry insiders but rarely brought to the public’s attention with such clarity: the Italian electricity market pegs the price of energy to the last power plant closing the gap between supply and demand, often linking it to natural gas, regardless of the share of renewables actually fed into the grid. The result is that wind and photovoltaic power—abundant resources in Southern Italy—produce high margins for producers, but do not translate into a direct benefit for the regions that host them.
Occhiuto highlighted a further imbalance: thanks to renewable energy produced in the South, the North enjoys lower average bills, representing what the Governor called the only truly successful equalization between the two macro-regions of the country.
Occhiuto’s proposal is clear: unlock the reform of zonal pricing, i.e., a system of differentiated tariffs by geographic area based on the average local cost of energy. This reform, which has remained stalled, could become a factor in attracting investment in areas with lower energy costs, creating a multiplier effect on the entire regional authorization chain for new plants. Occhiuto’s vision goes beyond the issue of tariffs. The Governor has explicitly opened the door to the possibility of attracting data centers and energy-intensive companies, outlining a southern ecosystem capable of becoming a hub for energy-intensive industries, provided that the competitive advantages of local renewable generation are returned to the regions themselves. This initiative forcefully revitalizes the strategic role of Southern Italy in Italy’s energy transition—and one that HeySun, the Energy Transition Expo, is closely following as an integral part of the debate that informs its mission.
