Enel CEO Sees Electricity As Fuel Of Future For City Transport

Enel SpA (ENEL.MI) Tuesday said electricity will be the transportation fuel of the future in cities, after signed a deal with Rome's municipality that will give Italy's capital the country's biggest vehicle-charging infrastructure.

"There an unstoppable evolution for electricity to be the fuel for environmentally-sustainable cities," said the utility's chief executive, Fulvio Conti, at a Rome press conference held with Mayor Gianni Alemanno.

Enel signed Tuesday a memorandum of understanding with Rome's municipality and peer Acea SpA (ACE.MI) to build 200 new outdoor electricity charging stations in the capital. The sites will be determined by the end of the year.

This will bring Rome to more than 300 outdoor charging stations, which is the largest infrastructure for any city in Italy and one of the biggest in Europe, said Mayor Alemanno at the press conference.

Enel wants to be a "leader" in the sector, said Conti, adding that Enel's budget for the electric vehicles sector is "modest" when compared with its capital expenditure of about EUR27 billion for 2012-2016, but notes that it represents about 80% of total industry investments in Italy.

Conti also acknowledged that "significant growth" will depend on the speed at which automakers promote electric vehicles and greater use of the technology to lower costs.

-By Liam Moloney, Dow Jones Newswires; [phone]; [e-mail]