The Arera Energy Authority has updated the cost of gas for vulnerable customers, who therefore remained in the protection service. For the month of April 2024, the reference price drops to 100.54 euro cents per cubic meter, thus marking -0.9% on March, including taxes.
Arera explains that the drop is due to the reduction from 1 April 2024 of the component covering supply risks, the retail marketing component and the transport component, which offset the increase in the price of gas to cover the costs of supplying.
For the month of April, which saw wholesale prices rise compared to those recorded in March, the price of the gas raw material alone for customers in the vulnerability protection service was equal to 0.326265 euros per cubic meter (30 ,4921 euros per MWh).
According to the National Consumers Union, this gap is precisely relevant: “Despite the increase in prices in the wholesale markets, the price of gas for vulnerable people is falling. Even if the savings are minimal, equal to 11 euros on an annual basis, it is a demonstration of how regulated prices are still important to protect families’ wallets”, underlines vice-president Marco Vignola. “The regret remains that the reduction could have been equal to 133 euros if the system charges and the old VAT rates had not been remitted at the beginning of the year. Without these increases, gas would have fallen by 12.8%”, he says.
But other associations are more critical. Assoutients in fact, he highlights how much road remains to be done to return to pre-war levels in Ukraine: “If you compare the current tariffs with those in force in the same period of 2021, it turns out that today vulnerability users pay bills that are more than a third higher compared to three years ago.” The price of gas for vulnerable customers “is in fact 36.9% higher than that in force on the protected market in April 2021, with the consequence that the average bill is around 300 euros higher per household compared to just three years ago”. For the Codaconsthen “the real problem is represented by the gas tariffs on the free market. If for vulnerable users the drop in bills is almost invisible, for customers on the free market it is even worse: the tariffs are still high both for price contracts fixed than for those at variable prices, since contrary to expectations, the long-awaited competition between operators capable of reducing gas bills has not been generated”.
