When energy prices rise, not all Italian territories suffer the same shock. The impact depends on what they produce, how much energy they consume, and how far their value chains rely on oil, gas and related products. To map this vulnerability at municipal level, Civiqa and OpenEconomics have developed the Municipal Energy Exposure Index (EEI), a composite indicator that combines the local employment structure with sectoral energy intensity data and Eurostat input–output tables. The result isa new picture of energy risk across the Italian production system, useful tounderstand where national and regional industrial policies can make a realdifference.

A local issue with national roots

Clearly, the energy dependence of an industrial areais not something that can be managed at municipal level. Municipalities do not set gas prices, do not manage electricity distribution grids and do not negotiate supply contracts for large firms. Yet territorialanalysis still has a very clear rationale: the composition of the local production system determines how much each community is exposed to energy shocks, both in terms of jobs and business competitiveness.

An area where 40% of workers are employed in ceramic sand bricks is structurally different from one dominated by information technology. The former will absorb any energy price increase in an amplified way; the latter will be almost immune. Knowing this distribution is the first step towards designing flanking measures, energy transition strategies andemployment support policies that are genuinely tailored to the real needs ofeach territory.
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The highest-risk sectors

The graph below shows energy intensity values for themain Italian industrial sectors, expressed in tonnes of oil equivalent per million euro of value added. Sectors highlighted in red face the highest risk(over 300 toe/mln€ VA), those in orange an intermediate risk, while those ingreen are least exposed.

Cement, steel, chemicals and ceramics rank at the top, with energy intensity levels between 3 and 7 times higher than in sectors such as mechanical engineering and electronics. Chemicals and petrochemicals add to already high energy intensity a very strong direct dependence on oil & gas feeds tocks used not only as fuels but as actual production inputs: resins, plasticisers, solvents.

How to measure the energy vulnerability of a municipality

To build this map, Civiqa and OpenEconomics have constructed a composite index combining two distinct dimensions. The first is Oil & Gas dependence (OG): how much of each sector's intermediate inputs comes from oil and natural gas value chains. The second is energy intensity (EI): how much energy is consumed per million euro of value added produced. Both indices are rescaled to a 0–1 range and aggregated at municipal levelusing NACE-sector employment shares as weights, so that each municipality receives a score that faithfully reflects its own production structure.

Knowing which sectors are most exposed is, however, only the first step. The next is understanding where they are concentrated, how many people work in them and what happens to those territories when price sspike. This is the subject of the second article in this series.