• "In our hands. Together towards a socially just energy transition." That is the title of the debate promoted by Amundi at the Salone del Risparmio 2022.
• The event, held on 10 May 2022, brought together Paolo Proli, Amundi; Simone Molteni, LifeGate; Maria Grazia Davino, Stellantis; and Cecilia Fouvry Renzi, Air Liquide.

The energy transition is an obligatory path: today, 80 per cent of global energy production is fossil-based and accounts for 73.2 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. It is an epochal, costly challenge, strewn with difficult choices. But it is in our hands. This is how the debate promoted at the Salone del Risparmio 2022 by Amundi, Europe's leading asset manager and one of the top 10 operators worldwide, opens.

The energy transition seen through the eyes of business

The event, held on the afternoon of 10 May 2022, deliberately brought together different worlds. While Amundi represented finance, the business side was represented by carmaker Stellantis and Air Liquide, a leader in gases, technologies and services for industry and healthcare. Two very different realities, but both in the midst of a period of profound change.

Paolo Proli, Head of Retail Division and Executive Board Member Amundi Sgr © LifeGate

Maria Grazia Davino, SVP Sales & Marketing Stellantis Enlarged Europe © LifeGate

Simone Molteni, scientific director of LifeGate, with Paolo Proli © LifeGate

Cecilia Fouvry Renzi, Hydrogen Energy – Air Liquide South West Europe © LifeGate

Stellantis has set ambitious targets: investing 30 billion euros in the energy transition by 2025, building 5 gigafactories, and ensuring that — still by 2025 — 98 per cent of its products in Europe have at least one electrified version. "Our projections show that in 2030, 70 per cent of sales in Europe and 40 per cent in the US will be electric vehicles," explained Maria Grazia Davino, SVP Sales & Marketing Stellantis Enlarged Europe. "Today their production costs exceed those of combustion vehicles by 40 per cent. In the short term, we are aiming for cost parity between traditional combustion and electric vehicles."

Hydrogen prepares to play a starring role

There is another technology — or rather, energy carrier — set to play a starring role. "To comply with the Paris Agreement, hydrogen must rise from 0.2 per cent to 20 per cent of total primary energy consumption," stressed Cecilia Fouvry Renzi, Hydrogen Energy – Air Liquide South West Europe. A company that has been developing these technologies for more than fifty years and, among other things, has commissioned the world's largest unit for the production of carbon-free hydrogen through membrane electrolysis, in Quebec. "Today everything is possible, because the technologies are ready. The challenge is mass deployment. Strong regulatory and political support is needed."

Amundi @Amundi_ENG

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🇮🇹 #SdR22 | Si chiude Il @salonerisparmio. Al di là dei record, siamo stati felici di contribuire con contenuti e partecipazione attiva ad una manifestazione sempre più importante per il #risparmiogestito e per i #risparmiatori. ⤵
ow.ly/gwIM50J6lXN

♥ 2 12 mag 2022 · Apri su X →

"Investing in the hydrogen ecosystem right now will allow us to continue living in the world we know how to live in — that is, moving around and producing — but without emitting CO2 into the atmosphere," Paolo Proli, Head of Retail Division and Executive Board Member Amundi Sgr, told LifeGate. "At the end of last year we launched a thematic fund and, within a very short space of time, we raised more than 600 million euros in Italy. These are private investors who decided to place their savings in support of a new and extremely interesting energy model that will probably become the leader in green energy production."

Finance as an accelerator of the energy transition

The voices of finance and industry were joined by that of science, with Simone Molteni, scientific director of LifeGate. A science that has been reiterating for decades that the current development model is not working, because it damages the ecosystems on which our very survival depends. "To give an idea of the scale, every euro of profit in the food sector corresponds to 2.24 euros in social costs — the so-called externalities — paid by someone else," he says. But solutions exist, are now well established and, despite the resistance to change that has characterised the past twenty years, have also been successfully tested. One example? Costa Rica, a country that as early as 2015 ran on renewable energy for 300 days out of 365. And that transformed the safeguarding of ecosystems into a competitive factor, building a thriving tourism industry centred on natural parks.

Debora Pastore @pastore_debora

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[#SdR22] Paolo Proli chiude la conferenza @Amundi_ENG richiamando il ruolo e la forza degli #assetmanager nel guidare il cambiamento verso un’economia a zero emissioni nette. #transizioneenergetica #decarbonizzazione

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Until now, examples like these have been sporadic, but they can — and must — become the norm. Finance, too, has a role to play: Molteni concludes that it "is the engine that can shift the transition up a gear." "Finance channels private and public capital towards the combination of energy transition and social wellbeing. Two dimensions that must go hand in hand, with an eye to progress and no longer merely to profit maximisation," echoes Paolo Proli. "Today we talk about the energy transition as an investment opportunity. Finance can be a gardener who brings water — that is, money — to a more beautiful and inclusive planet that protects resources for future generations."