This report describes the 2020 update (plus preliminary final balance for the first 9 months of 2021) of the most significant cost items reported in Chapter 4 (‘The National Electricity Bill and Its Main Components’) of the RSEview monograph entitled ‘31’ and published in early 2014.
The document presents the main components of the national electricity bill that contribute to the price of the electricity consumed (kWh): cost of energy procurement in wholesale markets, cost for dispatch service, cost of transmission/distribution/measuring services, general system charges, and taxation.
In 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Italian community spent a total of about 45.4B euros on electricity consumption, broken down into energy purchase on the market (38.3%), transmission, distribution and metering service (15.2%), general system charges (27.5%), and taxes (18.9%). This expenditure decreased by about 15% compared to 2019, due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on production activities nationwide. In 2021 – which is expected to be an ‘almost normal’ year – the community is expected to spend nearly 64B euros (unit cost: approximately 21 eurocents/kWh), namely 18.5B euros more than in 2020 and 10.5B euros more than in 2019. This amount was estimated without taking into account government interventions (about 5B euros) to limit the effects of rising prices on the energy market and assuming other cost items to be in line with 2020 values. Dividing the total expenditure by national electricity consumption gives an estimate of the unit cost of electricity taken by the entire community. Over a period of 9 years (2012-2020) the unit cost has remained in a range between 15.99 eurocents/kWh (2020) and 18.62 eurocents/kWh; it should be noted that in 2020 the unit cost decreased by about 9.7% compared to 2019.