Dear Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I have accepted with great pleasure President Mohamed bin Zayed’s and the United Arab Emirates Government’s invitation to join this Summit, as I deem it very helpful and extremely valuable to multiply the opportunities for debate, for dialogue, on the best solutions we can put at the service of such a historic challenge as energy transition is.

We do know the international community has set itself very ambitious goals in this regard. The first Global Stocktake agreed at COP 28 in Dubai under the Emirates Presidency set goals that are still far from being achieved, but this must not frighten us or lead us to step back.

However, it must certainly impose us to reason in new ways, on the one hand overcoming the anachronistic division between developed Nations and emerging ones – so as to share responsibilities and the undertaken path as much as possible – and, on the other hand, rejecting the ideological approach to a subject that has nothing to share with ideology.

We will not succeed in tripling the renewable energy generation capacity by 2030, nor in doubling the energy efficiency rate, if we continue to chase decarbonisation at the price of economic desertification or to set aside, for ideological reasons, solutions that could instead help build a viable alternative to fossil fuels.

We need to be pragmatic, simply because reality demands so. Estimates say the world population will reach 8.5 billion by 2030 and global GDP will double over the next decade. This will inexorably push up the demand for energy, not least due to the growing needs deriving from generative Artificial Intelligence development, for increasingly sophisticated and high-performance algorithms require increasingly massive volumes of energy. Think about what happens every time we ask a question to an AI-based chatbot: the energy consumed is 15 times higher than for a simple online search. Already today, data centres consume about 1% of global power. This percentage is inevitably bound to rise, with growing demand on top of the demand traditionally coming from industry and manufacturing. The combination of these two factors will put further pressure on electricity grids and energy infrastructures.

The future of energy transition and digitisation will thus depend on our ability to strike a balance between sustainability and innovation. We need to devise a balanced energy mix, based on the technologies we have in place, those we are experimenting with, and those yet to identify. I am not only referring to renewable energies, but also to gas, biofuels, green hydrogen, and carbon dioxide capture – without forgetting nuclear fusion, which can potentially produce clean, safe and, moreover, unlimited energy, and turn energy from a geopolitical weapon into a widely accessible resource, effectively changing history. Italy is playing its own part in this direction, and thus hosted, in Rome, the first meeting of the World Group on Fusion Energy promoted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.).

Yet, if we want to make energy transition concrete and sustainable, we must ensure it is complemented with adequate infrastructures. And I am sure that developing interconnections can be the keystone of a new energy diplomacy to multiply opportunities for cooperation among us and generate shared benefits for all.

With this approach, Italy stands to become the strategic hub for energy flows between Europe and Africa. We are a natural platform in the Mediterranean and this enables us to act as a supply and distribution hub matching both the existing and the potential supply from Africa with Europe’s demand for energy. The Italian Government is giving voice to this ambition also through the Mattei Plan (the cooperation plan with African countries that we launched) which embraces energy as one of its very pillars and also provides for strategic connection projects.

I am thinking of the Elmed power interconnection between Italy and Tunisia. A project co-financed by the World Bank and the European Union for a high-voltage, direct-current 600-MegaWatt cable extending for around 220 kilometres.

I am also referring to the ‘SoutH2 Corridor’ for hydrogen transportation from North Africa to Central Europe via Italy, or the high-potential projects we launched within the G7 framework, such as the ‘Energy for Growth in Africa’ to encourage clean energy investments in the African Continent.

But the Mediterranean can become the space for building many other energy cooperation opportunities, both by strengthening existing projects and launching innovative ones. Italy is traditionally linked to Western Balkan Nations, as my friendship with Prime Minister Edi Rama shows, and, over time, these bonds have also resulted in energy infrastructure projects.

I am referring, for example, to the power interconnection stretching for 430 kilometres along the Adriatic seabed and linking Italy to Montenegro and the Balkan region. A strategic infrastructure, which we aim to strengthen and make even more efficient and competitive.

And we intend to pursue this direction, so I am remarkably glad, as Edi did already, to announce here the signing of a Tripartite Strategic Partnership Framework to launch an equally ambitious project between the two shores of the Adriatic.

With His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed and Prime Minister Edi Rama, two good friends of mine, two good friends of Italy, today we are going to attend the signing of an extremely important commitment to implement a new energy interconnection for producing green power in Albania and exporting part of that power to Italy, thanks to an undersea cable across the Adriatic Sea. We strongly believe in this project involving our three Governments, as well as our private sectors and grid operators.

I am personally proud of this initiative, because it tangibly shows new forms of cooperation can be built even among seemingly distant partners, at least geographically speaking. Partners who, however, are able to see the chessboard as a whole and not just the quadrant of that chessboard that apparently concerns them most closely. Thus, this initiative is a concrete step towards a truly global interconnection, from Asia to the Gulf, from North Africa to Europe, capable of supplying energy bi-directionally.

Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen,

we know we are living in a particularly complex era, marked by momentous transformations. We now have a choice to make: we can either suffer these transformations while staying idle, or we can interpret them as opportunities.

I strongly believe we should choose the second path and follow it courageously and visionarily, with no fear to dare. Because, as the economist Julian Simon said, “The main fuel to speed the world's progress is our stock of knowledge; the brakes are our lack of imagination”.

Thank you very much.