Light down, tolls up, gas stable. From today, the barometer of services registers positive and less positive news: the cost of the electricity bill (- 3% ) for families but it is a apparent more than substantial decrease and now we will see why. A veritable rain of 623 million instead it will reduce the price paid by small medium enterprises (merchants, craftsmen, industry) for electricity. And this is good news.
On the other hand, as every year increases inexorably, the cost of highway tolls.And this is less good news. The gas bill remains stable. Instead, increases are in sight for water, a sector in which – it should however be emphasized – prices are so low as to have made investments essentially impossible, which are urgent, above all in the purification sector. But let's see in order what awaits us.
Electricity
From today the price paid by family-type (2700 kilowatt hours of annual consumption, and 3 kW meter) drops by 3%. The reasons: producing electricity costs less and the Authority has finally managed to hook up to the drop which was very conspicuous in wholesale during 2014, with a collapse in quotations on the electricity exchange which reached peaks of 40%, but which it has not even touched residential consumers. The cost of dispatching, i.e. the service that Terna requests from operators to keep the electricity system in balance, has also decreased. However, the share that each of us will have to pay for fixed network costs is increasing: it is an effect of the drop in consumption, due to the crisis and the improvement in energy efficiency. But one shouldn't have too many illusions: if prices remain unchanged throughout the year, the typical family will pay 513 euros for its consumption. It paid 514 (Authority estimates) in the fourth quarter of 2013. We went from 19,2 cents to 18,7 cents per kilowatt hour, with a difference of just 0,5 cents. So we're essentially at a standstill.
for companiesHowever, there are new things. The Competitiveness decree, converted into law last summer, had promised a 10% reduction on electricity bills incurred by small and medium-sized enterprises. Now they can start collecting it. The last step of the long administrative process has in fact been completed and a few days ago the Energy Authority published the resolution with which, starting today, the 623 million will be distributed which will be recovered with certain measures (contested by the operators concerned who have started an avalanche of appeals to the Tar) such as the spread of incentives on photovoltaics. The substance is that a first benefit of these cuts will be redistributed to SMEs that use low voltage energy (with available power greater than 16,5Kw or with 1,5Kw power for "other uses") or medium voltage. The entity of the reductions will be decided during the year, at each quarter, with the updating of the common bills.
Gas
There are no substantial changes. From today we will pay 81,73 cents per cubic meter against 86,2 cents at the beginning of the year. Here the drop, unlike in electricity, was more substantial: from one average annual expense of 1.207 euros, it drops to 1.143 euros. “We note that the decrease in the price is non-existent, despite the collapse of the oil market and the reduction in consumption. For consumers, the actual saving is only 72 euros a year in all. Nothing compared to what should happen in a competitive market”, comment Ivano Giacomelli and Luigi Gabriele, respectively national secretary in charge of institutional affairs of the Codici association.
Water
THEaverage increase foreseen by the Authority will be of 4,5% in 2015. It adds up to the 3,9% already applied in 2014. The new increases will be gradual and will start over the course of the year in the various areas of the country where, in any case, the Authority is introducing a single tariff which operators will have to comply with. Furthermore, for 6 million Italians the price of electricity will drop by 10%: these are the customers of those 1.250 managements who have not responded to the Authority's requests on the communication of their costs and who therefore will have to reduce their tariffs. The situation in the water sector is very complex in Italy, there are many managers who fail to comply with their customers. The investments that would be required are enormous, structural changes to the system have been started which will bear fruit but it will take years to recover the accumulated delay.
Highways
From today click a weighted average increase of 1,3% but in many cases it will be 1,5%, the maximum ceiling granted by the Ministry of Infrastructure to concessionaires. The milleprorghe also allowed the motorway concessionaires to extend until 30 June the presentation of the integration proposals between the various sections to which the possibility of an automatic extension of the concessions is linked. The presentation of the new financial plans for investments will thus be postponed to the end of 2015. Unless the European Commission puts Italy in formal notice for a law considered in Brussels not very pro-competitive.
