June 30, 2026
Emma De Fino
DIPENDERE COSTA: LA CRISI PETROLIFERA COME CONSEGUENZA PREVEDIBILE DEI COMBUSTIBILI FOSSILI
The largest oil supply disruption in recorded history, beyond being a war story, is an economic one.
Since the closure of the Strait of Hormuz in late February, global oil supply has fallen by 12.8 million barrels per day. OPEC+ spare capacity sits at 170,000 barrels per day, a buffer that covers less than two-tenths of one percent of global demand. The IEA projects a cumulative stock deficit of 900 million barrels by September, even after a coordinated release of 400 million barrels from strategic reserves. Rebuilding those reserves will require roughly an extra million barrels per day of supply for three years.
Any economy that imports the majority of its energy is facing a balance-of-payments problem, an inflation problem, and a growth problem, all at once.
The response from capital markets tells a different story than the response from governments. Global energy investment in 2026 will reach $3.4 trillion, of which $2.2 trillion flows to clean energy and $1.2 trillion to fossil fuels. Oil investment is declining for a third consecutive year despite prices above $100 per barrel. In the 1970s, high prices triggered an extraction boom. Today, capital reads the price signal as temporary and volatile. The money is moving toward domestically available energy: renewables, nuclear, storage. Close to 30% of all cars sold globally this year will be electric. Battery deployment is expanding across markets with construction timelines of around two years, a fraction of what new fossil fuel extraction requires.
The countries that invested in this direction before the crisis are measurably better off during it. Brazil’s dual-fuel vehicle fleet, running on sugar cane ethanol and gasoline, has kept domestic fuel prices only 6% above pre-war levels, while the rest of Latin America pays the full premium. Pakistan’s rooftop solar boom, largely a response to the 2022 energy crisis, has shielded households from this one, avoiding $12 billion in oil and gas imports even before the war began. The UK Climate Change Committee has calculated that the cost of reaching net zero is less than a single fossil fuel price shock. The insulation is not theoretical. It is showing up in import bills and household budgets right now.
Europe is not among the insulated. Eurozone fuel sales fell 3.5% by volume in April, the steepest year-on-year decline since October 2023. Diesel prices rose by more than a third in twelve EU countries. Inflation hit 3.2% in May.
The European Central Bank is expected to raise interest rates for the first time in nearly three years. The consumer response, fewer journeys, delayed refuelling, has been rational. The fiscal response has not. European governments have committed over €11 billion in mostly untargeted measures: fuel tax cuts in Germany, Spain, Ireland, Italy. The IMF has warned that these measures strain already-stretched public finances without addressing the structural vulnerability they are meant to offset. Bruegel has flagged a further risk: competitive fuel subsidies across EU member states could produce cross-border fuel tourism, with each country undercutting its neighbours until the fiscal cost becomes unsustainable.
The pattern is identical to 2022. Temporary, generalised price containment that becomes politically entrenched, subsidising the commodity whose volatility is the problem.
At Italian petrol stations in April, queues shortened not because supply improved but because fewer drivers could justify the trip. The country’s energy dependence from abroad stands at 74%, among the highest in the European Union. The OECD projects it as the G20 economy with the lowest growth in 2026-2027, a ranking attributed directly to the energy crisis.
The Documento di Finanza Pubblica (DFP)’s baseline projects growth of 0.6% in both 2026 and 2027. Under an adverse scenario with oil at $115.5 per barrel and gas at €93.4 per megawatt-hour, both already exceeded by actual prices, growth falls to 0.4% and 0.2%. The deficit reached 3.1% of GDP in 2025, breaching the European 3% threshold by €1.6 billion. Public debt stands at 137.1% of GDP and is rising. Inflation has been revised upward to 2.8%.
The crisis response replicates 2022 without variation: generalised excise cuts, neutralisation of ETS costs for gas-fired electricity producers, extension of coal use. Italy’s environmentally harmful subsidies exceed €25 billion per year. Between 2012 and 2023, only 9% of ETS revenues were spent on decarbonisation. The Superbonus, which contributed to the deficit overshoot, was dismantled without a structural replacement for residential energy efficiency. The government equalised deduction rates for generic renovation and energy-specific upgrades, eliminating any incentive differential at an estimated cost of €2 billion. PNRR transition funds are only 45% spent, with the plan set to expire in June 2026.
The ECCO policy briefing frames this as a vicious circle: a country that grows slowly because it pays too much for energy, and pays too much because it invests too little in transition. The DFP itself acknowledges that in the response to energy vulnerability, no structural policy follows from the diagnosis.
The arithmetic is not ambiguous. The IMF estimates that renewable energy investments produce double the GDP impact of fossil fuel investments. Italy’s own sovereign green bond programme has demonstrated this concretely: every million euros of transition spending generates €1.5 million in additional GDP and 23 jobs. The returns compound; the costs of inaction compound faster.
The Ufficio Parlamentare di Bilancio (UPB) projects climate damage of over 5.1% of GDP per year by 2050, more than €100 billion annually, under a no-action scenario. Public debt could be 99 percentage points higher than official projections by mid-century.
Italy’s transition investment needs are estimated at €131-143 billion per year, including adaptation. The sums are large. They are also smaller than the cumulative cost of not spending them.
Every euro spent softening the current price shock is a euro not spent making future shocks irrelevant. The DFP 2026 poses the question without answering it: not whether Italy can afford to invest in transition, but whether it can afford not to. The data, from the IEA’s supply projections to Italy’s own budget documents, suggests the answer has already been given. The political system has not yet received it.