Gas and electricity bills: October is likely to be a nightmare

While the Italians are distracted from the holidays, from the start of the electoral campaign and from the restart of the football championship, the topic of the probable new rise in the cost of electricity and gas bills abruptly enters the public debate in recent days. If in Italy the cost of producing energy from gas remained at current levels (about 220 euros per megawatt hour) and Russia’s threats to Europe on the closure of gas pipelines in the autumn were real – the Regulatory Authority said for Energia Reti e Ambiente (Arera) – in October the cost of bills could reach “skyrocketing”, with increases of up to 100% compared to today.

A worrying scenario for families and businesses already in difficulty, aggravated by the effects of a resolution introduced in 2018 by the Arera itself (which went unnoticed in a period when things were better), on the basis of which, today, all of us users compete, through the “socialization of non-collectable charges”, to pay in the bill the sums not covered by the “arrears” from all over Italy, or from insolvent families, bankrupt companies and companies that traded energy on the free market (up to about 600) ended up in default due to the stratospheric increase in the costs of gas to produce energy, which reached peaks of 800%.

Faced with such a scenario, what to do? The decision to summon the voters to the polls quickly, immediately after Draghi’s definitive resignation, was taken by the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella with the aim of soon reaching the formation of a government (in 2018 with the current “Rosatellum “It took 89 days of negotiations to reach the M5S-Lega agreement on the name of Giuseppe Conte) that approves the 2023 Finance Law by 31 December of this year, to avoid Italy’s provisional budget exercise, that is a public spending methods in which, in fact, it is not possible to plan investments or significant changes to the existing system in the management of accounts.

The President of the Republic was clear on this: “There can be no pauses in the interventions that are indispensable for Italy”, he said obviously thinking also of the energy sector which must find quick solutions to curb the “skyrocketing” bill prices through large investments, public and private, necessary to propose a valid alternative to the production of electricity from gas and coal and to respect the commitments undertaken in the Ecological Transition Plan (PTE).

The new “national target for the reduction of climate-altering emissions”, in fact, provides for the drop to 256 million tons of CO2 equivalent (-72 million compared to the previous target) by 2030, as established “Integrated National Energy Plan and the climate “for the years 2021-2030.
Electricity generation will have to discontinue the use of coal by 2025 and come 72%, by 2030, from renewable sources, which will have to contribute to national needs in the amount of 95-100% by 2050.

An objective that Italy would like to achieve with investments in sectors that have not been exploited until now such as offshore wind, but above all through a great expansion of the energy produced by solar photovoltaics, which according to estimates could reach between 200 and 300 operational gigawatts by 2050 ( with plants that theoretically could extend approximately between 300 and 450 thousand hectares on the national territory), that is to say at least ten times the situation recorded in 2020, when the solar panel systems were able to produce energy for 21.4 GW. The interim target 2030, while leaving open the possibility of a contribution deriving from imports of gas and energy from other countries, of possible technological developments (the DTT project for the production of nuclear energy from fusion is starting in the Enea laboratories in Frascati), it is estimated that it can reach an energy production that would reach about 70-75 GW from renewable sources, compared to a tricolor efficiency which in 2019 was a total of 55.5 gigawatts. Energy also needed to give concrete answers to the automotive sector – given the ongoing transition to electrified traction, which provides for the construction of 31,500 ultra-fast charging points for transport in the Italian Pnrr – and real estate, with more and more buildings invited to use heat pumps for heating.

Stratospheric numbers those just mentioned, with a gigawatt that is equivalent to 1 billion watts of electricity, which, however, are of relative interest to the man on the street, worried as he is for that 100% more that could reach him between head and neck in his bills. gas and electricity in October 2022.

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