Modal back shift alarm. “We are facing a concrete risk with a consequent increase in freight rates”

Modal back shift alarm. “We are facing a concrete risk with a consequent increase in transport freight rates already starting from the first quarter of 2023” is the alarm raised by Domenico De Rosa, CEO of Smet, who points his finger at the ETS, i.e. “the EU emissions trading system applied to Transport”.

Modal back-shift, De Rosa’s alarm

A system that, according to De Rosa, “without effective alternative technologies on available energy sources becomes just a new wretched tax for an essential sector such as transport that is so hard hit at a critical time for our country’s economy due to the various emergencies that follow one another from the Covid 19 pandemic to the war in Ukraine, galloping inflation and the worrying energy crisis underway…”

“The modal back shift,” De Rosa continues, “means making our country jump back thirty years and losing all the benefits related to the lower externality costs that Italy benefits from, estimated at over EUR 2.2 billion, with 4.8 million tonnes of CO2 abated.

On several occasions, particularly in the last few years experienced between the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine, De Rosa has asked the government to pay special attention to the transport sector, which is facing an energy transition that Smet has often anticipated with choices oriented in the direction of the green economy.