Companies forced to reduce production and, in some cases to resort to social safety nets, to cope with expensive energy. From ceramics to glass, passing through rubber and plastic, then arriving at metallurgy. To deal with the increase in prices (electricity rises by 138% on average and gas by 228%) the companies engaged in a sector which, according to a first estimate, involves more than 200 thousand workers.
The signals
“Precisely because of this increase in costs, the first and alarming ones come from the energy-intensive industries of the ceramic, glass, rubber and plastic sectors, three sectors that employ about 210 thousand workers – write in a note Sonia Tosoni, Lorenzo Zoli and Daniela Piras, respectively Filctem, Femca and Uiltec secretaries -. To suffer particularly in this phase are the small and medium-sized enterprises that in some cases have resorted to the production stoppage with the consequent shutdown of the plants and the placement in the Redundancy Fund for thousands of workers, who risk losing their jobs “.
The Murano glassworks
To deal with the price of gas bills “skyrocketing and with unsustainable costs” are 64 Murano glass factories. A case that also ended up at the center of a question to the ministers of economic development and the ecological transition. “According to the statistics compiled by GME (Energy Markets Manager), methane gas – writes the first signatory Nicola Pellicani – went from 0.23 euro per cubic meter in September 2019 to 0.85 in October 2021, up to 0, 98 of these days. This is an almost daily and constantly growing increase. The danger we are running is that of nullifying the efforts to relaunch economic activities and made in Italy ”.
The ceramics
No less important are the effects on the production of ceramics. The sector (ceramics and refractory materials) has an average consumption of methane equal to 1,500 million cubic meters per year and an electricity requirement of 1,800 GWh / year. To raise the problem, underlining that “the boom in energy costs is likely to push some industrial companies in many sectors to suspend production, even in the presence of orders from Italy and abroad” is the delegation of Confindustria Ceramica, led by the president Giovanni Savorani and the director Armando Cafiero, received in the Senate by the Deputy Minister of Economic Development Gilberto Pichetto Fratin and by Senator Nazario Pagano, vice-president of the Constitutional Affairs Commission at Palazzo Madama.
Article 39 gas
From the representatives of the sector the request for “actions aimed at controlling prices, including greater liquidity of the national natural gas market, a rapid issue of the measure of the so-called article 39 gas, a redefinition of the economic conditions for the gas interruptibility service in the coming winter period, alongside interventions to stop the speculative effects in the Ets market and recognize the correct compensations ».