Bills still rising, families will pay 365 euros more for electricity and heating

Electricity and gas bills will rise again. It won't be like in the black two-year period 2021-2022, when there were doublings in prices and more, but the percentage increase will still be double-digit. To the complete detriment of people on fixed incomes, such as employees and pensioners. In recent days the research company Nomisma has made an estimate that is anything but reassuring: this year families will meet to pay bills alone of around 365 euros more than in 2024, around 125 for electricity and 230 for heating. The increase is mainly caused by the geopolitical tensions that remain and in particular the end of the agreement between Ukraine and Russia on gas transit. The two, as is known, are at war but until December 31st a contract on the passage of gas was in force. Ukraine has not renewed it, Russia has closed the taps, consumers pay the bill (in war it would be worse, in any case).

In addition to this, the usual seasonal price increases also have an impact. As a result, tensions on the energy market have returned and the losers are above all all the elderly and frail people left in what is defined as a greater protection regime. Who will find their bills increased by 18.2%. In the province of Brescia we are talking about around 70 thousand users, usually with low pensions and which in 2025 will have increases in the order of a few euros (minimum pensions, for example, go from 614.77 to 616.67 euros). Obviously, not only citizens will pay the energy bill but also businesses. Not so much the atelier that forgets the lights on – in the words of Nomisma president Davide Tabarelli – but the energy-intensive ones, yes, of course. What a Brescia – where steel and mechanics are at home – are not few. The Confindustria Brescia study center has estimated an energy bill for companies of the order of 1.33 billion euros for 2024, in line with 2023, a sharp decrease compared to 2022 (when the bill was 3.8 billion euros) but decidedly higher than pre-Covid values ​​(in 2019 it was 586 million euros). An additional account that certainly does not help competitiveness on international markets. Again according to Confindustria Brescia, in the first ten months of 2024 the spot price recorded in Italy stood at €104/MWh, double that of France and Spain, 44% more than in Germany.

Hence the need to decouple the value of electricity from that of gas, considered the only way to exploit the production of renewables and bring down the price of electricity. These are economic and political discussions, but what is certain is that the estimated increases will not benefit the budgets of families and businesses. 2025, it seems, does not start under the best auspices.

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January 3, 2025 (modified January 3, 2025 | 08:13)

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