Foto Flavio Scollo
Our mission
We operate Italy’s high-voltage transmission grid, which is one of the most modern and technologically advanced grids there is in Europe. We’re responsible for providing the country with energy and guaranteeing its safety, quality and cost-effectiveness over time. It’s our role to enable the ecological transition, so that we can create a new, eco-friendly development model based on renewable sources. This is a highly complex task that calls for a central coordinator with the power to control a whole host of actors. That’s why we’ve dubbed ourselves “drivers of the transition”, and why we sum up our mission in the claim Driving Energy.
Sustainability in Terna
Terna has a public service mission for the transmission and dispatching of electricity throughout Italy, and strives every day to reduce the environmental impacts of its activities and of the electricity infrastructure managed across the land.
Terna is taking important steps to minimise the physical presence of the infrastructure and its interaction with the landscape:
- more and more frequently we use underground or submarine cables instead of pylons: many of our major strategic projects currently in the pipeline or in progress will in fact be underground or under the sea, meaning they’ll be “invisible”;
- we come up with innovative solutions for electrical substations that minimise land usage, interference with areas of high environmental, natural, landscape and archaeological value, and interference with urbanised areas;
- we use natural engineering techniques that camouflage our infrastructure, making it blend in even more with the surroundings;
- we design pylons that blend in with the landscape in an increasingly harmonious way.
Find out what Terna does to respect the environment
The 2024-2028 Industrial Plan: A wider vision
Terna’s new Industrial Plan aims to strengthen the company’s strategic role as enabler of the energy transition. It includes important firsts and significant innovations: the highest ever investments; the Sustainability Plan integrated within the Industrial Plan for the first time; a strong emphasis on digitalisation; and a specific plan for social projects.
Terna has identified three key goals in order to fulfil its role and its mission in this new stage of developing the electricity system:
- continuing to guarantee the electrical transmission service for the country, with the highest standards of quality and adequacy in an increasingly changeable scenario;
- investing in the digital transition, essential for accompanying and supporting the energy transition and the development of the grid, relying on Artificial Intelligence and robotics to help the grid to become increasingly connected, smart and secure;
- continuing to guarantee a high level of security for the electricity grid, to face up to the new challenges that an increasingly decentralised and complex system poses in terms of the security of physical assets and cybersecurity.
Learn more about the Industrial Plan on Terna’s website
Terna and the art of photography
Terna has a long-standing relationship with Italian contemporary photography. In 2020 and 2021, it explored its electricity infrastructure and employees that serve the national system through images.
In 2022, it launched the Driving Energy Award, a free competition open to anyone, which invited communities of Italian photographers to submit a creative interpretation of a given theme.
Driving Energy Award 2022 – Contemporary Photography Catalogue
Driving Energy Award 2023 – Contemporary Photography Catalogue