(Finance) – In 2023 7.6 million electricity and gas social bonuses were paid out, for an estimated recognized amount of 2.15 million euros. This is what emerges from the Report on the results of the monitoring of the provision of social bonuses carried out by the Authority.
The energy bonus mechanism is therefore confirmed to be effective.i, which has made it possible to broaden the group of economically weaker consumers, also thanks to the automation and strengthening in 2023 with targeted interventions by the Government. In particular, Law 29 December 2022, n. 197 which, in the face of the emergency of rising prices, had raised the ISEE threshold useful for accessing energy compensation (electricity and gas bonus) to 15 thousand euros (in 2022 the threshold had already been raised to 12,000, compared to the basic threshold of 8,530) and to 30 thousand euros for large families. The increase in the number of beneficiaries, in fact, was calculated on average at 22% (+21.5% for electricity and +23.1% for gas), with the increase in the thresholds that allowed it to be recognized to 1.5 million electricity customers and 1 million gas customers more than in 2022. This group disappeared from 1 January 2024, with the drop in international prices and the return to the pre-crisis ISEE thresholds.
For the President of ARERAStefano Besseghini a possible evolution must be considered: “Today the difficulty is to intercept the segment of consumers who cannot be classified as poor in the strict sense but whose low spending capacityexposes itself to risks when energy prices increase. The transfer of some general system charges present in the bill to general taxation would allow us to better match the actual income levels and intervene on energy poverty”.
In the period January-December 2023, approximately 4.576 million electricity bonuses were paid out for economic hardship (there were 3.8 million in 2022 and 2.5 million in 2021, the year of first application of the automatic recognition mechanism), of which 1.5 million families belonging to the increased threshold of 2023, between 9,530 and 15,000 euros of ISEE. While the gas bonuses are just over 3 million (2.4 million in 2022 and 1.5 million in 2021). Instead, there are 64,828 (+24% compared to 2022) electricity bonuses for physical hardship, for those who use electromedical equipment for life support.
In particular, as regards the electricity bonus, there is still an increase widespread in all areas of the country and the highest number of bonuses recognized in the Southern regions (32.67%) compared to the other four areas of the country (Islands, North East, North West and Center). In terms of growth, the number of beneficiaries compared to the total number of bonus recipients increased more significantly in Friuli-Venezia Giulia (+31%), Lombardy, Veneto, Abruzzo and Molise, with percentage increases in these cases of around 25%. Campania stood at almost 29% of bonus recipients in 2023 on the total number of domestic supplies in that region.
Also for the gas bonus, the highest number of awards were in the southern regions (28.8%), although Lombardy remains the region with the highest number of beneficiaries overall (12% of the Region’s domestic supplies). In terms of growth compared to the previous year, the number of beneficiaries compared to the total number of gas bonus recipients has increased more significantly, in addition to the regions mentioned above for the electricity bonus, in Puglia, Sicily, Calabria and Basilicata, with values around +25%.