(Finance) – The recent peaks of Gas pricesgreatly influenced by movements of financial operators who speculate on international tensions on raw materials and energy, they are also significantly affecting the electric market, distorting the real supply and demand dynamics. This phenomenon affects the whole of Europe, primarily i Countries such as Italy and Germany that still depend on a significant extent on natural gas for energy production (40% of the mix). Domestic consumers in these countries support very high energy prices than those less related to gas (0.293 €/kWh in Germany, 0.274 in Italy vs. 0.212 in France and 0.203 in Spain – source Eurostat 2024).
The sector of electricity producers – renewable and natural gas – is fully aware of the difficulties that families and businesses are going through and are developing intervention proposals to mitigate these phenomena and their repercussions on consumers.
Currently, the most penalized are the small consumer, both domestic and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), who do not benefit from the many active concessions and already adopted in the past in favor of large industrial groups. The latter have been receiving a series of subsidies for years (Interconnector, interruptibility, CO2 refund), to which the Energy Release mechanism has been added.
To protect these segments of non-facilitated consumers, the medium-long term contractualization is proposed, through the Energy Services Manager (GSE)of renewable (wind and photovoltaic) capacity on which the country has been investing for a couple of years in accordance with the objectives of the energy and climate plan for 2030 approved by the government and not yet assigned. This initiative could help to stabilize the final consumer prices of about 20 billion kWh of electricity for the current year.
Also, with the Renewal of wind and photovoltaic plants In existing sites, an additional 20 billion kwh of production could be added, with the dual advantage of avoiding additional environmental impacts and increasing the availability of renewable energy. This would favor the lower energy dependence of the country on gas imports.
Overall, we estimate a benefit for the system about 2 billion eurosunlocking additional investments for over 10 billion euros intended for the strengthening of the plants.
Moreover, the price of electricity could further go down if the regions authorized the renewable plants that have been blocked for some time.
The producers are ready to respond to the indications that the government could give to implement these measures and guarantee greater consumer protection and the entire system.
(Photo: Zbynek Burival on UNSPLASH)