Too many operators. In water management as in the waste service where 8.101 managers waste resources. Water and waste are two sectors that are still very problematic, explains Stefano Besseghini, president of Arera, in his annual report 2023 to Parliament on the state of services and on the activity carried out in 2022. In particular, the water sector is a sector in which the players are multiple and are closely linked to "local dynamics". As well as that of waste which, even more so, has this "local parcelling, because it is further fragmented, especially in relation to treatment and collection, with respect to the water sector".
In the thirty pages of presentation, Besseghini lined up the Authority's budget, starting by emphasizing the "two particularly demanding years, at times dramatic" which also saw Arera engaged in the front line in trying "to deal with the various critical that were taking shape”, with gas prices skyrocketing.
Water: the "water service divides"
Besseghini, in the course of his report, reviews the water sector, where, he underlines, there are "elements of growth in the role of the operators". In particular the investment spending – driven by favorable regulation – has gone from 1 billion euros in 2021 to quadruple in 2022 and a 4,5 billion in 2023 "fostering a path to improve the quality of the integrated water service" in the management of rainwater and in the reuse of purified water. There are still too many, however the managers and the need for greater infrastructural integration is confirmed by the existence in Italy "of a water service divide" between North part e South of the country, already reported in previous surveys, with data showing a worsening gradually increasing from the areas located in the centre-north of the country to those located in the centre-south and on the islands.
Average values of M1a - Linear water losses and M1b - Percentage water losses, by geographical area
The water will become more and more one scarce resource, a huge problem which will be accompanied by that, already in fact, of a structural change in rainfall. “It is customary to say – underlined Stefano Besseghini – that future wars will be fought for water and not for oil. I don't know how to be a prophet but certainly, as we have dramatically had the opportunity to verify over the course of these years, we will not only have a problem of scarcity of the resource, but a structural change in the mechanism of precipitation with an extremes of the phenomena", continued the number one from the Arera.
Trend of total investments planned for the four-year period 2020-2023 (in millions of euro)
Waste, Arera: "The number of operators is still increasing, there are 8.100"
Then there is the chapter of waste. Besseghini evidences that, among many others critical issues, there is the one related to local institutional governance. Confirming the significant "parcelisation of the service" is the still high number of territorially competent entities (3 thousand 550) but also the number and type of activity carried out by registered managers (8.101), which in the majority of cases (66,6%) are accredited for a single activity and only rarely (1,9%) for all the activities in the cycle. “The tariff method – recalled Besseghini – is therefore nothing more than a grammar with which to compose the present and future story of the local development of the waste sector. A grammar mainly in the hands of local decision makers”.
Electricity and gas: in 2024 a free market for everyone
Finally, the energy chapter. Over 6,2 million bonuses distributed in 2022 have allowed savings of 3 billion for families. From 1 January 2024, he recalled, the electricity market will be totally free. “Adequate information campaigns repeatedly requested, planned and postponed will acquire even greater importance, as well as systems for comparing offers and analyzing consumption profiles”.
In this segment, the Report recalls, in 2022 the migrazione from price protections to free market in electricity (64,8% of customers, since updated to March it rises to 69,3%), with 560 active vendors and Enel still at the top among operators, while in gas last year the share of households who purchased supplies in the standard offer it fell to 33,2% (it was 36,6% two years ago) and the active businesses instead reached 512.
