The Ministry of the Environment cuts funding for offshore wind power in the ports of Taranto and Augusta

From 78 million to just over 38. The Ministry of the Environment reduces the funds allocated to investments in offshore wind power for ports and the two ports identified as national hubs for this type of activity bear the brunt of the reduction: Taranto and Augusta. The first goes from 28 million and 500 thousand euros to 13 million and 940 thousand, while the second from 49 million and 800 thousand to 24 million and 359 thousand.

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The cut was communicated recently to the port authorities of the Ionian Sea and the Eastern Sicilian Sea and to the cabinet office of the Minister of the Environment, Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, by the General Directorate of energy sources and qualifications (Energy Department) with a note from the general director Marilena Barbaro.

"Following the linear cuts suffered on the expenditure items of this ministry", writes Barbaro, it was "had to proceed with a downward remodulation compared to the resources initially available for the infrastructural interventions for the development of the offshore supply chain, consisting of over 78 million euros". And now, adds Barbaro, "in order to commit these residual resources in a short time", the port authorities of the Ionian Sea and the Eastern Sicilian Sea are invited "to send their adhesion to the remodulation of the resources within a short term, providing the data regarding the infrastructural works, already the subject of the candidature, which the authorities believe they can finance with the resources indicated and which are in any case functional to the objectives of the legislation". It now remains to be seen whether the one communicated by Mase is a temporary cut and whether other resources may subsequently arrive to compensate.

Taranto, in particular, had focused heavily on the possibility of investing in offshore wind, creating business activities, a supply chain and new jobs, especially with the crisis of the former Ilva which also dragged the port with it. Offshore wind power was in fact seen as a new prospect to give "oxygen" to the port itself, which had seen a significant drop in traffic as a result of lower production in the steel industry and the failure to take off of the container terminal managed by the Turkish group Yilport.

Now this possible scenario risks disappearing or, at least, being greatly reduced, also impacting the projects that various companies had imagined for Taranto. From Renexia to Vestas to end up with Nadara, the company that intends to build two large wind farms in the Adriatic Sea (Salento and Brindisi) and which has expressed its intention to make use of Taranto's infrastructure.