“Electricity consumption, which in the weeks of complete closure recorded a year-on-year contraction of 22 percent, begins to recover after May 4, and drops to -13 percent. It is a first sign of normalisation, even if the road will be long”. This is the most significant datum of the latest Congiuntura report REF, edited by RefRicerche. After two months of lockdown, with electricity consumption plummeting to levels never seen before, only one week of partial reopening was enough - from 4 May - to open new and positive glimmers.
This is a first sign of normalization in a situation that postpones decidedly heavy. The economic cost of the blockage of activities, caused by the pandemic, is serious, the REF researchers underline: “according to our estimates, world GDP would have contracted by 3.7 percent in the first quarter, and an even larger fall could occur in the second. In Italy, the GDP, after the contraction at the beginning of the year (-4.7 per cent) will mark another reduction in the second quarter”.
And so governments, abroad as in Italy, are being pushed to speed up reopenings, while maintaining some useful measures to control infections. "This is a delicate passage - however warn the REF researchers - and not without risks: in fact, it is necessary to calibrate the right degree of restriction on the movement of people by adopting alternative measures to the closure of companies".
Electricity is an important economic indicator and only in part, observes the research, is it a good consumed by families (22%) while "mostly it is an input for production, especially in industry (41 per cent) but also a significant share of private and non-private services and agriculture”. In the day when the data on March industrial production certify the vertical drop due to the impact of the coronavirus, it is therefore no wonder that the collapse in electricity consumption has fallen hand in hand. This is why the data on electricity consumption in the first week after May 4, which rose to -13% should be considered a "first attempt to get out of the impasse". There has been a recovery, “even if the distance to be bridged before bringing energy demand back to pre-crisis levels is still wide. On the other hand - concludes the research - for many sectors the lockdown has not ended and for others the recovery can only be gradual".
