How to defend against the escalation of aggressive offers for electricity and gas bills? The Authority is preparing astandard offer in view of the full liberalization of the market which will start in June 2018. This was announced by the president of the Energy Authority, Guido Bortoni who presented his annual report in Parliament on Tuesday morning. The Authority will soon also deal with waste (the decree has already been passed as part of the Madia reform and is now being examined by Parliament) and will change its name: it will become Arera (Regulatory authority for energy, networks and the environment). The report, focused entirely on 2015 but also projected towards future deadlines, highlighted that energy consumption is distributed: +3,2%, returning to a level similar to 2013. A real turnaround thanks to the growth of the GDP of 0,8% last year and good weather conditions.
GOODBYE TO PRICE GUARD
In 2018, the definitive opening of the free market for electricity will wipe out the current protection system in which the Authority defines the price of light for the great majority of families, today around 20 million, while the remaining 10 million are already passed on the competing market. The operators do not always shine for the correctness of the proposals, as demonstrated the mega-fine of 14,5 million of euros imposed byAntitrust ad Acea, Edison, Enel, Eni accused of having made too "aggressive" offers. So how to stem the risk of an increase in disputes after liberalisation.
The Authority proposes precisely thestandard offer. What is it about? “It is a package of contractual clauses supervised by the Authority and which are difficult to evaluate by the small average consumer. They are not about price and they do not limit the creativity of the free market itself. I am thinking, for example, of the paths to follow for the detachment of supplies covering technical aspects, unknown to the ordinary customer. These clauses will not be derogable by companies. There will be some next to it others editable, for example those on payment times of 30, 60 or 90 days: here the negotiation between customer and operator is possible. However, the package of non-derogable and non-derogable proposals that will make up the standard offer - concluded Bortoni - will be available to consumers who will in any case have the possibility to compare at least one standard offer 100%. of supply for each seller on the market free". The competition in this case will be only on the price.
An additional tool to ferry the consumer towards the market will be simple protection which will come into effect from January 1 2017. In practice it is an intermediate system to make the structure of the new prices understandable to the consumer and which incorporates the standard contract defined by the Authority. Anyone can connect to a special portal managed by the Single Buyer and find the proposals of the operators who have adhered to simple protection. There you can then proceed with the purchase as on an e-commerce portal.
THE OPERATORS PROLIFER
The start of liberalization has already led to the proliferation of many operators. In the'electricity the number of sellers rose to 487 in 2015 from 450 in 2014 while there are 379 (from 342) in gas. Not everyone gives the same guarantees of seriousness and correctness, it is evident, and this plethora of sellers could greatly complicate liberalization before the inevitable consolidation of the market. Enel and Edison are confirmed as the main sellers with market shares of 33,7 and 17,1 percent respectively, but while Enel prevails in the household sales market (73,8%), Edison prevails for medium and high voltage companies
A SEA OF CONSUMERS
To understand how important the energy sector is, it would be enough to say that alone electricity affects 37 million consumers altogether. Of these, 29,7 million are domestic (and VAT numbers) and 7,3 million are non-domestic (companies, large and small).
The price structure is still unfair: le families pay an average of 20,71 cents per kilowatt hour (over 300% more than the cost of energy, the rest are additional system charges including the decommissioning of nuclear power, incentives for renewables, etc.), nshops and small businesses pay 19,27 cents, industries (medium voltage) 14,72 cents e large industries (high voltage) 10,61 cents. The synthesis is that families with low consumption pay less than the EU average: then it is unloaded on the bills in the weight of a strong progressiveness. The industries paid 2015% more in 20 but the final values are no longer the most expensive in Europe.
remove some flaws, the Authority decided a network tariff cut (transmission, distribution and measurement) of 700 million in 2015. But Bortoni has asked the government and Parliament "to tackle the overall reform of system charges, taking into consideration the transfer, even partial, of the annual requirement to general taxation".
In the gas sector, out of approximately 20 million customers, 36% are already on the free market; 64% therefore remains under protection, a proportion of almost 2 thirds, similar to that of the electricity sector.
In the gas sector "the reform launched in 2012 by the Authority - underlined Bortoni - has made it possible to reduce the price of gas by 20% in four years (not the bill on which taxes weigh). Prices have aligned with European levels, Take or Pay contracts have been renegotiated by operators and are no longer a petrified forest”.
WATER, INVESTMENTS START AGAIN
90% of the Italian population can now count on tariffs approved by the Authority. It's about 53,3 million people involved. This has made it possible to restart investments in water networks, in a sector in which "they have been lacking for decades", observed Bortoni. In a nutshell, it is 5,8 billion planned for the four-year period 2014-17.
INFRASTRUCTURE
The Authority's judgment on the TAP, the gas pipeline under construction from Azerbaijan, was positive. Instead, I criticize the judgment on the doubling of the Nord Stream pipeline by Gazprom on the Russian-German Baltic routes which is only in Russia's interest. "If intended to intervene and replace the southern hub - said Bortoni - it would be a political project that responds to the logic of a member state, but not at all European". Italy, on the other hand, must "maintain the course established with Brussels, covering the last mile of the strategy with a relaunch of innovative rules that bind the Southern European platform with the Continent".
