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The first effect will be felt from January 1 of next year. When you pull up with your car at a gas station, something will have changed. The price of diesel. It will be higher, and thus refueling will cost more if the car is powered by a diesel engine. And little by little, from year to year and for ten years, the extra cents will increase, until they reach the same price as gasoline, the green one that today costs more than diesel. To understand how this change will take shape that will make diesel cars no longer convenient in terms of fuel costs, it is necessary to enter the rooms of the Ministry of the Environment. It is there where the owner Sergio Costa, sought after for the 5 stars, is carrying out a project that aims to cut a part of the so-called harmful environmental subsidies, a term in which the reduced rate of diesel also resides.
The government plan
The work starts from afar because putting a hand to harmful environmental subsidies does respond to a logic of protection of the environment and health, but at the same time it affects benefits and concessions that are fundamental for sectors such as road transport. Many, in previous governments and with different shades, have tried. No one has succeeded. The operation is surgical, but very risky for the reasons mentioned above. Of the 19.8 billion in harmful subsidies provided by the state, 17.7 billion go to support so-called fossil sources. And diesel is one of them. It absorbs most of the resources. Now the goal is to gradually increase the relative tax rate and bring it, in 2032, to the same level as that of gasoline. We will start from the current gap (the special tax on diesel is € 0.617 per liter, that on gasoline is € 0.728 per liter) and little by little we will advance to the final lineup.
The operational drop point of the intervention will materialize in a month, with the budget law, where the Ministry of the Environment aims to insert the cut of harmful environmental subsidies for a value that in 2032 will allow to recover 2,800 million. Among these 2.67 billion will come from the cancellation of the difference between the rates of diesel and gasoline.
Grillo’s push
Costa’s plan, who was elected as the 5-star Minister of the Environment, targets the much-needed green shift that the Movement is trying to put back at the center of its agenda. Covid has surprised many of the measures designed in this regard, starting with the introduction of the plastic tax that the government has decided to postpone for next year. And even green bonds have yet to take off. In M5 environments it is pointed out that it is no coincidence that Beppe Grillo has returned to bet on renewables, precisely as an alternative to fossil fuels. The co-founder of the Movement sent an audio speech to the Senate on the occasion of the presentation of the regulations that give condominiums and small and medium-sized companies the possibility of having an incentive to produce energy from renewable sources and consume it directly, without having to put it in the net. And it is no coincidence that Grillo himself has embraced the same line that is at the base of the ministry’s plan: “Fossil energy must cost a lot, not a little, and all those taxes can be redistributed in support of renewables.” Costa’s plan, in fact, envisions a virtuous, zero-balance mechanism: cutting harmful concessions will be offset by environmentally friendly subsidies.
The destination node of the resource
But what will happen to the money that will come from cutting environmentally harmful subsidies? The zero balance proposed by Costa implies that those same resources must be converted into green incentives, but the Minister of Economy, Roberto Gualtieri, has repeatedly repeated that this money is used to finance the tax reform to cut taxes. The question remains open. From the Ministry of the Environment they announced that the work in progress is not aimed at generating cash, thus confirming that the savings will be allocated immediately in favor of all those who will be affected by the cut. The measures, in fact, will have repercussions not only on the citizen who will go to refuel, but on the entire automotive sector. On the other hand, the road transport sector will be excluded, which nevertheless requires clarity. The associations that represent this sector are on alert and ready to protest if the cut affects them. “If the reduction of excise duties on diesel will also affect us, then our response can only be a stop in road transport, a strike,” says Paolo Uggè, president of Fai Conftrasporto.
The protest of the oil union
Those who are already protesting are the Petroleum Trade Union, the association that groups and represents the main companies operating in Italy in the field of processing, logistics and distribution of petroleum products and biofuels. “It seems to me that the government has already decided. I would like things to be said as they are and that is that the diesel driver will pay more for diesel, says President Claudio Spinaci speaking with Radio 24. The government’s battle against diesel starts uphill.
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