The new volume reports the adjustment to the end of 2020 and a preliminary final balance for the year 2021 of the main cost items on the bill: wholesale electricity supply, dispatching services, transmission/distribution and metering services, general system charges and taxes.

In 2020, electricity consumption cost the community about 45.4 billion euros – a clear decline (-15%) compared to 2019. The expenditure is divided into the following items:

• purchase on the wholesale market, including spending to cover the net procurement costs of dispatching services (38.3%);
• transmission/measurement service (15.2%);
• general system charges (27.5%);
• taxes (18.9%).

The decline can be mainly attributed to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused, one after the other: a reduction in consumer demand (approximately -5.9%) due to the forced shutdown of production activities following emergency government provisions (e.g. period of total national lock-down), a decline in the price of commodities on major European platforms (e.g. -35.3% decline in natural gas price on the Italian Virtual Trading Point market) and a resulting reduction in the Italian National Single Purchase Price (PUN) on the day-ahead market (weighted average PUN approximately -24.1%) which, in turn, was also partly affected by the impact of renewable production on the residual demand (net of renewable generation) allocated to programmable plants.

Compared to the estimated maximum expenditure of 56 billion euros in 2012 (the first year of observation of the main cost items), the estimated value for 2020 shows a reduction of almost 20%.

Going into more detail on the individual expenditure items, it can be seen that in 2020 all amounts have decreased significantly compared to 2019; in particular, expenditure for purchases on the wholesale market and general system charges were down by 19% and 17%, respectively. The reduction in purchases on the wholesale market is mainly due to energy procurement on the DAM/IM, while the decline in general system charges is due to the A3 component covering incentives for renewable and assimilated sources.

Regarding the 2021 preliminary final balance, provisional data for the first 9 months on consumption, exchange trades and PUN levels on the DAM show a clear change in the national billing trend compared to 2020 and 2019. In particular, in addition to the almost full recovery of the contraction in final consumption in 2020, there is above all an important increase in the PUN driven by the surge in the price of sources (especially gas) on the main international markets. For example, in the third quarter of 2021 alone, the increase in the average PUN was around 80 and 73 euros/MWh compared to 2020 and 2019.

Based on the above considerations, a national bill for 2021 of almost 64 billion euros was provisionally estimated (with an increase of 8 billion euros compared to the 2012 maximum, 18.5 billion euros compared to 2020 and 10.5 billion euros compared to 2019). It should be noted that the estimate of the 2021 bill was made gross of the effects of spending restraint measures introduced by the government (approximately 5 billion euros).