ECCO Warns: Italy Risks Missing Climate Targets Amid Rising Emissions and Policy Gaps

The ECCO think tank raises the alarm: Italy risks missing its NECP targets. Transportation and civil engineering remain the most critical sectors.

On the eve of the thirtieth United Nations Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP30), Italy is lagging behind on its climate commitments

According to a new report by ECCO, the Italian climate think tank, our country is significantly behind on the targets set by the National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan (PNIEC): approximately 84 million tons of CO₂ equivalents remain to be reduced by 2030, equivalent to over 16 million tons per year. This gap weighs on competitiveness, public finances, and utility bills, in a context in which climate damage has already cost €12 billion in 2025 alone.

With the publication of the UNEP Gap Report, which measures the global distance from the goals of the Paris Agreement, ECCO raises the alarm: transport and the civil sector remain the main culprits of the slowdown. Emissions are not falling, and in some cases are even rising, while investments and long-term policies remain fragmented and insufficient.

“Without an immediate realignment of the NECP, Italy will pay twice: in competitiveness and in its bills. Fiscal and industrial decisions are needed that shift consumption and investment toward electricity, efficiency, and renewables,” commented Chiara Di Mambro , Director of Strategy for Europe and Italy at ECCO.

Looking in detail, the transport sector , responsible for 28% of national emissions, continues to grow, reaching +7% compared to 1990 levels . Despite efforts, there are just 333,000 battery-powered electric cars on the road , far from the PNIEC target of 4.3 million by 2030. Charging infrastructure also remains insufficient, with 67,500 points installed as of September 2025, a 19% increase in one year but still inadequate for future needs.

In the residential sector, emissions have returned to stability after the decline in 2021–2022, according to ECCO’s report. Investment , however, has drastically decreased from €120 billion in 2021 to just €20 billion in 2023, a sign of a loss of momentum in energy retrofitting. Industry has shown a structural decline in emissions since 2005, but the policy framework remains fragmented and lacking a medium- and long-term horizon, undermining investment.

For its part, the electricity sector has made progress , with 13.5 GW installed between 2023 and 2024 and another 4 GW in the first eight months of 2025, but the pace is not enough given that to date only 25% of the target of +70 GW by 2030 has been achieved. Even on the storage front, the road is long: of the 13 GWh installed in 2024, almost 59 GWh still need to be reached to meet the targets.

Although gas demand is declining and close to the levels forecast by the Italian National Energy Agency (PNIEC), new infrastructure investments continue, risking shifting costs to consumers. On the financial front, environmentally harmful subsidies have increased by €3.2 billion, reaching a total of nearly €24.2 billion. To make matters worse, electricity continues to incur fees and taxes up to three times higher than gas and approximately double those of diesel and gasoline.

Although the Italian Constitution has included environmental protection among its fundamental principles, a national climate law is still lacking. The PNIEC Observatory, which should monitor progress, is not fully operational, while the Monitoring Platform is the only new development. On the social front, the €9.3 billion Social Climate Plan for 2026–2032 has been presented, but it lacks a clear link to the new ETS2 system and an effective mechanism for assessing distributional impacts or energy poverty.

ECCO’s recommendations

ECCO calls for energy tax reform, with a review of electricity taxes and charges to make the benefits of clean technologies visible to citizens.

Also needed are the elimination of harmful subsidies, an acceleration of heat pumps, fast-charging infrastructure, and storage systems, and the creation of a multi-year automotive fund to support the electric vehicle industry.

On the financial front, the ECCO think tank proposes a targeted use of ETS/ETS2 revenues, the involvement of CDP, SACE, and Invitalia as de-risking tools, and the strengthening of climate governance with a national law and a fully active Observatory.

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(Featured image by Vilmantas Bekesius via Unsplash)

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