Barcelona — Italian consumers' power tariffs will increase nearly 8% for Q4 and gas tariffs will increase 6%, the regulator ARERA said, adding that it had frozen part of the tariff to prevent greater increases.
Italy's power, gas and water regulator, Autorita di Regolazione per Energia Reti e Ambiente (ARERA), said late Thursday it will increase both regulated domestic gas and power tariffs for the fourth quarter by 8% for power and 6% for gas, building on similar-sized increases for Q3.
ARERA said that high raw material costs and nuclear halts in France have impacted wholesale prices for both products and as a result it had intervened for a second consecutive quarter to cushion the impact by modifying some of the system cost variables that are used to calculate the final tariff.
Italian day-ahead exchange prices rose 29% in Q3 versus Q2, ARERA said, adding that forward prices show "no sign of letting up the current bullish trend."
ARERA said that its reference price for fourth quarter electricity would be Eur0.2176/kWh, up from Eur0.2022/kWh in the third quarter. This is the sharpest quarterly increase since Q2 2012.
Of the total, 55% of the tariff related to the cost of procurement (up from 52% in Q3), 18% for distribution, metering and related (frozen by ARERA for Q4), 15% for system costs (generally renewable incentives, frozen for a second successive quarter, and hence down from 22% in Q2) and 13% for taxes.
For natural gas, ARERA said that the reference price for the typical consumer would be Eur0.8307 per cubic meter, up from Eur0.7828/cu m in the third quarter, when the tariff increased 8% from Q2.
Of the Q4 tariff, 44% of that would correspond to raw material costs, up from 43% in the previous quarter, with 36% corresponding to taxes, 3% for system costs and 17% for transport and metering costs.
