Ilaria Conti is Head of Gas at the Florence School of Regulation.

Her main fields of expertise concern EU institutional relations and EU electricity and gas regulation.

She spent about 9 years in Brussels, working for the the Permanent Representation of Italy at the EU, the United Nations and, from 2005 until 2013, for EFET, the “European Federation of Energy Traders” covering various positions within the association.

Professor Conti joined the Florence School of Regulation (FSR) in 2015 as Energy Policy Deputy and in 2017 she was appointed Head of the new FSR Gas area.

She is author and co-author of many scientific articles and position papers, actually, until 5 years ago she was the Managing Editor of the publication “Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy” that belongs to the International Association for Energy Economics.

We met in qualities of master and disciple (I was the student, obviously) at the European University Institute in Florence – in the beautiful little town of Fiesole up on the hills west of Florence – where you, professor, were part of the teaching staff in a course that dealt with high quality regulation in areas such as climate and energy.

We tackled:
1. High gas prices in Europe: a matter for policy intervention?
Issues:

– Are gas storages still able to provide the necessary flexibility and contribute to hedging price spikes in the new context given by the war in Ukraine? Is it welcome a new gas storage legislation in the EU that provides a mandatory minimum level of gas in storage facilities ahead of the winter 2022/2023 and for the following winter periods?

– Solutions for a new gas procurement in Europe.

– Acceleration of alternative energy uptake as to wean off not merely Russian gas, but natural gas altogether (foresight)

2. Taxonomy and natural gas: a fact-based approach to drive sustainable solutions
Issues:

– Issues related to the delegated act from January 2022 – lack of public consultation;

– Will the targets under Paris Agreement be met?

– How will we ever know if the best available technologies related to gas are actually sustainable?

Raul Cazan