“Soon we will know if Europe can exist without Russian natural gas”

Dusseldorf, Rome Europe is “almost there,” says Francesco Starace. The head of Italy’s Enel, the world’s second-largest energy supplier in terms of sales, is optimistic that the continent will soon be independent of Russian natural gas. Since 2022, Europe will save 20 to 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas every year because additional renewable energies would be fed into the grid. “We will soon know whether Europe can exist without Russian natural gas,” says Starace in an interview with the Handelsblatt.

However, the 68-year-old, who has been running the Italian company for nine years, warns against investing billions in building a green hydrogen industry as long as the technology does not pay off. You can’t make the same mistake you made with the solar industry: “You can subsidize, you can support a few plants, but we shouldn’t waste an incredible amount of money again,” says Starace.