Wake-up call for energy planners

Italy’s mainland-wide electricity failure of late September might have been a freak occurrence, but it should serve as a reminder of the country’s vulnerability in the supply of electricity. Concern about vulnerability – in oil and gas supplies, as well as electricity – has been a long-running theme of Italian energy policy. Paradoxically, the authorities’ attempts to overcome it – mostly involving heavy-handed regulation – have added to the problem instead of reducing it, Martin Quinlan writes