The Superbonus never ceases to amaze, on the negative side. After the costs went beyond all predictions, devastating public finances and influencing a large part of the economic policies of the Meloni government, new data show how the over 122 billion allocated to the famous subsidy for home renovations were used. In this case, Pnrr funds were involved. A portion of the Recovery and Resilience Plan financed energy efficiency interventions, but almost half was used to carry out renovation works in 46,922 villas. The rest went to condominiums, with some record-breaking interventions, one above all, costing over 38 million euros for a building in a town of 800 inhabitants.
Pnrr funds to renovate houses and condominiums with the Superbonus
The National Recovery and Resilience Plan (Pnrr) provides for an intervention line of the “Green Revolution and ecological transition” mission dedicated to financing the Superbonus with 13.95 billion euros. The goal is to renovate over 100 thousand buildings to save energy produced and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“Financing the energy renovation of residential buildings, including social housing, to encourage deep redevelopments and the transformation of the national real estate park into ‘nearly zero energy buildings'”, we read on the government website dedicated to the Pnrr.
In June 2024 the Ministry of the Environment published the data: with 13.7 billion, almost all of the available funds, we renovated 46,922 villas and 13,833 condominiums. Despite the purposes declared on the government website, among the data there is no trace of “social housing” and there are around 200 million euros left to spend. These sums are among the non-repayable grants provided by the European Commission and which therefore Italy will not have to pay back with interest.
38 million for a condominium: top 3 of Superbonus record expenses
After extracting the data, through the Single Project Code (Cup) of each intervention it is possible to trace the details of the financed renovations. And according to Today.it, there are some notable records scattered across Italy. The most expensive intervention of all is in Mezzana, in the autonomous province of Trento. In this town of around 800 inhabitants, an apartment building was renovated for 38.8 million euros in 2020.
In the intervention sheet we read that the condominium is made up “mainly of residential units”, but it is not possible to have other details due to the privacy law. However, the classification is specified, “Contributions for disasters”. From the website of the autonomous province there are no similar funds allocated for the municipality due to extreme weather events in the last four years. It is likely that the intervention could refer to the Sismabonus.
The second place in this special ranking is a condominium in the province of Arezzo, renovated with over 18 million euros of Pnrr funds. The characteristics of the intervention are the same as the previous one. Third place for a condominium in Turin, which closes the podium with renovations for 16.4 million euros.
6.5 billion of the Pnrr for the Superbonus in the villas: the podium of spending
Moving on to single-family homes, the record goes to a house in Guidonia Montecelio, in the province of Rome, renovated for 426,969 euros. The only other villa above 400,000 euros for intervention is located in Tarzo, in the province of Treviso. The bronze medal for interventions in the villas goes to Torre del Greco, Naples, with 389,429 euros.
Almost half of the available Pnrr funds went to the villas: approximately 6.5 billion euros were needed to renovate 46,922 of them. The remaining 7.1 billion were divided among 13,833 condominiums. Although some of these works date back as far as four years ago, before now there was no detailed data available, but the latest Pnrr decree approved by the government allowed its publication by the Ministry of the Environment.
Map of Superbonus renovations with Pnrr funds: where the most was spent
Most of the renovation works are concentrated in northern Italy, confirming the general trend already seen with the Superbonus, which represents 60 percent of all interventions. Alone, Lombardy “accounts” for over 21 percent with 2.9 billion euros in spending.
In the South just over 26.4% of the resources, several percentage points compared to the 40% clause typical of Pnrr funds. Puglia is the region. Also counting these EU funds, according to the latest Enea data, the Superbonus cost the state coffers 122.7 billion euros to renovate just 4 percent of the residential buildings registered in Italy.
