ROMA – Bills, the increases for electricity and gas are triggered. With the end of the year comes the usual revision of energy tariffs for families and small businesses. And this is not good news: for gas the increase will be 4.5%, while it is even higher for electricity, equal to 5.3%.
In reality, the increases could be read under a more optimistic lens: the prospects for an economic recovery, thanks to the start of vaccination campaigns, have pushed up the prices of raw materials. Oil, as seen in recent weeks, has returned to around $ 50. As well as natural gas prices, returned to the levels of a year ago, driven by demand from China and the Asian countries, the first to emerge from the Covid emergency.
The economic recovery has, however, as a counterbalance the increase in tariffs for families, VAT numbers and small businesses, caused by the increase in raw materials. Arera, the authority that regulates the energy, networks and environment sectors, explains this in a note and is indicated by law to review electricity and gas tariffs every three months. In the last quarter of the year, the “single” price of energy on a national basis rose by 15% compared to the previous year and is back in line with the prices of the same period of 2019. For natural gas, a 23% increase in wholesale prices in the first quarter of 2021: which is reversed on the bills, because the period considered for the quarterly review is exactly the one that runs from January 1st to March 30th 2021.
In detail, for electricity the expenditure for the typical family in the rolling year (between 1 April 2020 and 31 March 2021) will be approximately 488 euros, with a variation of -10.2% compared to 12 months. equivalent to the previous year, corresponding to a saving of approximately 55 euros / year. In the same period, the typical household’s expenditure for the gas bill will be around 950 euros, with a variation of -8.8% compared to the equivalent 12 months of the previous year, corresponding to a saving of around 91 euros / year.
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