Italy's energy choice: the most expensive power in Europe

Italy has the most expensive energy in Europe, and the cause lies in a flawed government energy policy that has produced a heavy dependence on gas. This strategy has not changed in the past four years; under the Meloni government's guidelines, the stated aim is to turn Italy into a European gas hub. The social and economic consequences have been severe. According to the Italian Observatory on Energy Poverty (OIPE), drawing on ISTAT data, 2.4 million households (9.1 per cent of the total) now live in energy poverty, a historic record. Energy poverty is defined as the condition of households no longer able to heat or cool their homes because they cannot afford their electricity or gas bills.

Over these four years, the right-wing government led by Giorgia Meloni has passed legislation that severely restricts the installation of solar photovoltaics, while some 1,700 applications for renewable energy plant authorisations remain blocked in government offices.

The missed opportunity of 2022

At the end of 2022, as the centre-right coalition took office, a group of companies represented by the industrial association Elettricità Futura presented the new prime minister with an investment plan worth €85 billion to install 60 GW of renewable energy capacity. The proposal was not taken up, and a major opportunity for Italy was lost. Had those 60 GW been authorised, Italy would today have freed itself from dependence on 15 billion cubic metres of gas, the equivalent of its combined imports from Qatar and the United States, helping to lower energy costs and significantly reduce CO2 emissions.

The gap with Italy's neighbours is stark. In the first months of 2026, the average price of electricity in Italy was €125/MWh, against €45–46/MWh in Spain and Portugal. High energy costs feed inflation and erode the purchasing power of middle-class wages, while the continued burning of fossil fuels accelerates the climate crisis.

The mounting cost of climate inaction

In Italy, climate change over the past three years has caused severe material and economic damage through extreme events such as drought, heatwaves, tornadoes and floods, amounting to roughly €30 billion. The damage has hit agriculture, coastlines, homes and industrial production. According to the National Research Council, southern Italy is undergoing a serious process of desertification affecting regions including Sicily, Sardinia and Puglia, reaching as much as 65 per cent of Sicilian territory.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is racing towards renewables. In 2025, renewable sources overtook coal in the global electricity mix for the first time in a century, generating around 10,700 TWh against coal's 10,500 TWh, with gas a distant third at roughly two-thirds of that level. The direction of global investment and energy policy is unmistakable, and it is moving rapidly towards renewables.

A clear alternative strategy

The energy strategy of the Greens and Left Alliance, currently in opposition in the Italian Parliament, is clear: invest in renewables, in electricity transmission networks, in storage, in interconnections, and in the digitalisation of grids to improve their efficiency. From there, the task is to electrify final domestic consumption and a significant part of the industrial system. Industrial processes such as textiles, food and manufacturing operate below 300 degrees centigrade, and it is possible to convert them by installing heat pumps, delivering greater energy efficiency and lower costs. Yet against this backdrop, 2025 closed in Italy with an 8 per cent fall in authorisations granted to renewable energy plants.

We face a challenge of historic proportions. On one side are those who look to the past to produce energy, polluting and fuelling wars for control of hydrocarbon reserves; on the other are those who want to bet on innovation and the technological challenge of making the best use of solar, wind, geothermal and hydroelectric power, and who, through new storage technologies, can supply low-cost energy and build genuine energy sovereignty in the name of the planet.

Who pays, and who profits

Those who defend fossil fuels defend a model that allows energy lobbies to make profits paid for by the public through high bills. Over the past three years, the companies that distribute and sell gas in Italy have made profits of more than €70 billion. These profits consolidated with the start of the war in Ukraine and now with the conflict involving Iran. Analysis by Global Witness for The Guardian calculated that, in the first month of the war on Iran, the world's hundred largest oil and gas companies made additional profits of more than $30 million an hour, around $5 billion a week.

Rather than backing renewables, the Meloni government has approved a law to bring fission nuclear plants back to Italy, a move that is both anachronistic and ideological. Fission nuclear plants, even in updated and smaller forms, are old and in decline: they are very costly, and they generate highly radioactive waste that remains dangerous for many thousands of years.

Reaching 100 per cent renewables, meeting national electricity demand from solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal and biomass alone, is achievable, as a recent study by the Sapienza University of Rome demonstrates.