La energy crisis becomes more and more impactful, not just causing a surge in the electricity and gas prices for users and market operators, but it has also changed the paradigm of the services offered by the operators themselves, who are called upon to respond to the crisis by offering private individuals and businesses solutions that can mitigate its impact. So diversification, technology and energy saving they became the industry's top targets over the next few seasons. But if in the long term the answer lies in the sustainability and diversification of supply sources, in the short term what measures can businesses and citizens adopt to mitigate the impact of the crisis?
Energy crisis: causes and consequences
The ascent of the energy prices it was quite linear: first with the recovery of Asian countries in April 2021, then with the general recovery of the markets in the following months. Finally, the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine delivered the coup de grace, sending energy prices soaring, reinflicting an already serious situation. So, in addition to rising costs, European countries today are also facing a serious supply problem which is necessarily reflected in the levels of price of electricity and gas. In this scenario, the market has no choice but to take countermeasures, and due to such strong swings, operators have chosen to shift their offers from fixed to indexed pricesi, calculated starting from the Single National Price plus a spread. Furthermore, today end users pay much more for pure raw material: if before the energy crisis the final price consisted of around 45% of the cost of the raw material, now its bill weight is 80%. This means that the awareness of end users who buy energy today has also changed.
How to deal with the energy crisis in the short term?
One of the answers lies in the technologies of energy efficiency for companies and individuals. New efficiency technologies can help us avoid the risk of production stoppages, improve energy conservation and transport, have full control over consumption and limit the inefficiencies of individual units.
Thanks to the application of artificial intelligence, for example, we can make the work of some industrial machinery more efficient, reducing its energy cost and also maintenance costs, since having more efficient machinery means having machinery that lasts longer. Similar solutions – which we are adopting and proposing with Optima, already obtaining positive feedback from the market – are implemented for both private individuals and companies, with hardware that identifies and classifies domestic consumption and suggests the replacement of inefficient appliances.
The technologies of consumption optimization they can play a key role in the national energy game. It is no coincidence that these devices are often supported by the incentives for industry 4.0 provided by the Government, allowing entrepreneurs to have quick and effective solutions at the lowest possible cost.
How to deal with the crisis in the long run
In the long run, Europe is aiming for diversification not only of suppliers, but also and above all of energy sources: the security of supplies depends a lot on how we will be able to remodulate the country's energy mix in the coming years. To date, more than 80% of our energy comes from fossil sources, i.e. gas and coal, while less than 20% comes from renewable sources. The possibilities on this front are much wider, but we will have to wait a few more seasons to obtain the right energy mix. For this it is necessary to put the investments on the ground ecological transition, envisaged in the PNRR, to make our country more independent, and therefore safe, from an energy point of view and more sustainable from an environmental point of view.
