The Bill decree has not produced the promised savings: energy prices still high in Italy

ROME – Some tweets age badly. «The Bill decree is law», Giorgia Meloni wrote in X on 8 April, after the conversion of an elephantine provision. «A concrete and courageous decree, which lays the foundations for structurally lowering the cost of energy, and will guarantee savings for families and businesses». The government even quantified them: as many as 5 billion euros. Fast forward to today and there are no savings to be seen in the bills of Italian businesses and families, only increases. Blame the Hormuz crisis, which in a scorching summer pushed gas and electricity prices in Europe to their highest levels in three years. But it is also the fault of a law that has largely remained a dead letter, amidst objections from Brussels and slow implementation, with the result that Italy continues to suffer more than anyone else. Here, the wholesale prices of methane and electricity remain the highest on the continent, a bad premise for a winter that promises to be difficult on the energy front.

The gas spread

Let's start with methane, which in recent days on the TTF market in Amsterdam - the European reference - has jumped above 70 euros. The Bill decree provided for a mechanism to eliminate the spread, i.e. the additional extra cost paid on the Italian market (PSV), around 3 euros with peaks above 4. The good news is that the resources are there, abundant, now that Snam has sold the extraordinary reserves accumulated during the 2022 crisis. The bad news is that the mechanism does not start. From the public consultation carried out by the Energy Authority (Arera), which must define its functioning, various objections emerged, in particular from European traders, due to the distorting effects on the market. Objections on which the Commission has not formally expressed its opinion. The acronyms of the energy-intensive industries, from Assocarta to Gas Intensive, are calling for implementation, but starting in October, as Arera had said, appears difficult at this point.

The stop of Europe

And the dialogue with Europe proved to be even more complex on the intervention that was supposed to reduce (significantly, for everyone) the price of electricity, in a country where - thanks to delays on renewables - this remains closely linked to gas. The measure involved discounting the price of CO2 emission certificates (ETS) to thermoelectric power plants, so that it did not enter the wholesale price and was then recovered in the bills. Almost immediately a phoned-in stop came: in the context of state aid to respond to the crisis in the Middle East, Brussels made it clear that the ETS mechanism cannot be touched. Compensation on the price increases of gas raw materials is admissible, similar to the "ceiling" introduced in Spain in 2022, and in fact Arera has put a similar mechanism out for consultation. But in addition to the difficulty of negotiating the value of the ceiling, a change to the rule would be needed. Finally, again with a view to separating the price of electricity from that of gas, the platform for long-term contracts between renewable producers and companies is not active either.

The delay in renewables