News on the gas front, in fact, the mechanism for updating the prices of bills for households in the protected market has changed. From 1 October will be introduced new ways of updating the cost of the gas raw material for users under the protection conditionstoday about 7.3 million domestic customers, out of a total of 20.4 million, about 35.6%: in fact, the update will become monthly and no longer quarterly, overcoming the use of forward quotes, in order to intercept possible actions to reduce prices. This will be associated with a report to Parliament and the Government and the start of an emergency table with consumer associations. It is a note from the Arera that lined up the news due to the further dramatic increase in wholesale energy prices, linked to the conflict in Ukraine and the reduction in gas flows practiced by Russia.
Il The new method, linked to the emergency situation, will be in force until the end of the gas protection, currently scheduled for January 2023a deadline that the Authority has requested several times to be aligned with that of the electricity protection purpose, scheduled for January 2024. Also to immediately intercept any national and European price containment initiatives, the Arera has decided not to use as a reference the forward quotations of the wholesale market, but the average of the actual prices of the Italian PSV wholesale market, at the same time increasing the frequency of updating the price which becomes monthly, no longer quarterly.
“Too high prices, an ongoing war and a clear use of gas as a geopolitical lever call us to take extraordinary action, to try to guarantee the defense of the consumer and the security of supply. The use of a more dynamic price formation mechanism will make it possible not to transfer the costs of hedging the risk to the consumer and, instead, to immediately transfer to him the advantages deriving from any decisions, such as the ceiling on the price of gas, which may be assumed to European level ”, explains the president of the Authority, Stefano Besseghini.
The intervention adopted, according to the Arera note, while not being able to structurally act on the exceptional levels of market prices, aims to make supplies to consumers safer. “The persisting geopolitical tensions, in fact, have exacerbated the uncertainties about the availability of gas from Russia, increasing the criticality for sellers in finding on the wholesale markets the gas necessary to satisfy their customers, including domestic ones, for the next thermal year which starts from October 1st “.
With the mechanism approved by the Authority, therefore, the note continues, “the risk that sellers will not be able to guarantee their operations and therefore supplies to their customers is reduced, minimizing the danger that families are forced to resort to last resort services and the sellers themselves in the default service, jeopardizing the entire economic equilibrium of the Italian gas sector with additional costs that would be socialized “. Not only. “The new update method facilitates the retrieval of the volumes necessary to satisfy demand, thanks to the reduction of the risks currently linked to the differences between the forward prices used for the current protection update and the spot price at which it is possible to procure the part of consumption not foreseeable in view of the winter “.
“Of course, as the Authority has repeatedly pointed out, these interventions must be accompanied by national and international initiatives to restore the balance between supply and demand, such as the reduction of demand on a voluntary basis and the identification of mechanisms for the management of interventions in case of emergency, as also recalled in the report to Parliament and the Government sent today “, explains the Authority.
With the new update method, the Arera note continues, the value of the raw material component for gas protection will be published on the Authority’s website at the beginning of each month following the reference month. Furthermore, the Authority continues, specific transparency obligations are introduced for sellers who, in case of need for price recalculations with respect to what was previously invoiced, must not only provide appropriate information in the bill, but also create a specific section on the own website to explain, in a clear and understandable way, the reason for the recalculation and how prices are determined.
As for the emergency work table activated by the Authority, this will see, it continues, “the full involvement of the Consumer Associations, which will have among the first tasks that of defining further forms of communication and information, to make the whole process the most transparent and effective as possible “.
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