'Renewables and long contracts to cut bills in the company'

The detractors claim that distribution and transmission grid operators enjoy too high margins. What do you think?

In its annual report, Arera states that the Italian electricity grids cost consumers up to 20 per cent less than the European average. They are more efficient and despite lower tariffs they manage to make margins. The regulatory system is virtuous: it has existed for 30 years and has not been changed by any government. The distributor is pushed to make efficiency, which it progressively gives back to consumers. Investing in the grid means guaranteeing energy security. Remember what happened in Spain: when the flow of investment in the grids is interrupted, the risk is that there will be a collapse of security.

They also likened electrical companies to luxury companies

The comparison between electricity companies and luxury is not possible. They are very different sectors: the electricity sector requires large investments with long-term returns, while it is the opposite for luxury where investments are marginal and only to feed the brand. Here the fundamental aspect is the product, while for electricity companies it is the capital and therefore it is necessary to guarantee a return. The electricity sector is the industrial sector that invests the most in Italy: 100 billion from 2023 to 2027 and activates almost 700 thousand jobs. When we look at the results of the utilities, the reference is not the operating margin but the return on investment, which for the Italian ones is lower than the European average. And that of luxury is 7 times higher than that of the utilities.

Hydroelectric concession operators are also attributed high earnings and low production costs

Claiming that the production cost of hydropower is 20-30 euros per megawatt hour is a falsehood. This price does not even cover licence fees. Then there are the very high fixed costs of production and maintenance both when there is water and in times of drought. And this makes the costs of hydropower much higher than people think. The problem is that investments are at a standstill due to extremely cumbersome authorisation procedures: even the disposal of simple logs or stones in reservoirs is considered special waste management, with the associated costs and delays. And repowering, which could increase production by 7 or 8 per cent and that energy could be sold at reduced prices, is not being carried out.

So what can be done to reduce the cost of energy?

The massive participation in the GSE auctions on renewable plants has given a signal: Energy release, FerX, Macse, show how very competitive prices can be achieved through long-term negotiation. Plants that have come to the end of the incentive - a mechanism that has supported investments that cannot be repaid on the market - can be repowered and offer lower prices. There are also 150 gigawatts of renewable projects for which authorisations need to be released. This would make a real contribution to the country in terms of cost reduction. This does not mean moving towards a future of renewables alone, but it is necessary to increase their weight in the generation mix to decouple the price from that of gas through long-term contracts.