The 19.5% cut in electricity bills in the first quarter of 2023 – compared to the last three months of the year – decided yesterday by the Arera, will be a partial shot in the arm for businesses and consumers. On the one hand because the intervention on tariffs concerns only users who are still on the protected market (about 33%), but above all because distributors and suppliers are in constant trouble in terms of liquidity. Which is why they are forced to ask for deposits and monstrous bonds that choke the country’s entrepreneurial fabric. «We paid almost one million euros in advances for November and December 2023» says an entrepreneur customer of Hera and Plenitude who then adds: «Fortunately we have liquidity and bank credit lines, but this non-repayable expense will delay our plan investment of 8 million. And the hires we had planned. We had no alternatives, but there are many realities that are unable to pay ». Also because the one million down payment comes at the end of a year characterized by huge increases: only the entrepreneur’s bills have gone from 900,000 euros a year to 4 million.
«Suppliers use their liquidity to pay for the energy that they will resell to their customers, cashing in only months later» explains Massimo Bello, president of Aiget, the Italian association of energy wholesalers and traders, who then adds: «As long as prices have been in equilibrium, the system held up, but at these levels the market stalled. Supplies to industrial customers have low margins and the installments granted by the government slow down flows».
And while waiting for the Arera to announce the new gas tariffs on 3 January, the markets remain volatile with the risk of new increases during the winter. The causes of the drop at the end of the year depend on the decline in methane: thanks to a mild autumn, demand is reduced, while storage is full. From the highs of 340 euros reached in August, quotations in Amsterdam have dropped to 83 euros, and then there are the interventions of the government which in the Budget law has allocated 21 billion euros against expensive energy.
A measure that the president of Aiget, Bello, openly criticizes: «In Europe, since the beginning of the crisis, 700 billion euros have been spent in subsidies and contributions, when instead we had to focus immediately on savings. Politics should have promised “blood, sweat and tears”, but did not have the courage”. And so it happens that Carlo, with a pizzeria in the center of Turin, has seen his bill explode from 13 to 40 thousand euros and, despite always regular payments, last week he had to come up with almost three thousand as a guarantee for 2023. «To help the system the measures already launched should be made simpler, starting with the public guarantee through Sace. The advantage – continues Bello – would be real both for those who buy and for those who have to pay the sureties. It is necessary to allow suppliers to access better guarantees».
And the difficulty of the situation also emerges from the words of the president of Arera, Stefano Besseghini: «The percentage change, albeit marked, in the cost of electricity must not lead to hasty conclusions, the markets are still characterized by marked volatility and seasonality will affect changes in gas prices, and the absolute values are still extraordinarily high». However, he adds, “the situation on the wholesale markets was certainly affected by particular environmental conditions, but also by an evolution and a strengthening of the system’s ability to react to the persistence of the tragic war events”. For Codacons, the reduction in tariffs saves a typical family 348 euros in 12 months, but electricity tariffs in the first quarter of 2023 remain 15.4% higher than at the beginning of 2022.
Reason why the electricity and gas suppliers are writing to their customers that “due to the significant increase in prices we are forced to request the payment of a security deposit” threatening to cancel the contracts or “move your supply to the major market protection / safeguard at the first useful date”. A sting of about 200 euros per megawatt hour. In the meantime, the companies that supplied the SMEs have halved in a year and if before the fifty operators also competed on credit lines and guarantees, the disappearance of almost half of the market has eliminated the options in the hands of the companies. “We haven’t found anyone to take over from Hera or Plenitude without a deposit,” says the entrepreneur. —
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