ROMA (ITALPRESS) – Italian micro and small enterprises continue to pay much more expensive electricity than European competitors and large national companies. In 2025, enterprises with consumption of less than 20 MWh annually claimed a cost of 465 euros per MWh, well 101 euros more than the average of the European Union, with a differential of 30.7%. Even more marked the gap compared to large Italian companies, which pay only 130 euros per MWh: a difference of 335 euros. This is what emerges from the Energy Observatory 2026 of the NAC, which analyses the trend of energy prices and the effects on the competitiveness of the production system, with particular attention to micro and small enterprises. The picture is aggravated by Italy’s strong energy dependence on foreign countries, equal to 73.9%, about 16 percentage points higher than the European average. Oil and natural gas represent more than 72% of the primary energy sources used in our country, exposing the Italian economy to international tensions and fluctuations in quotations. In 2026, the Hormuz crisis led to a new surge in energy prices. In the first ten months of the year the wholesale price of electricity in Italy increased by 32.6% compared to the average of 2025, while in September it reached 230.8 euros per MWh, more than double compared to February. The penalization of small enterprises does not only depend on energy quotations, but also on the structure of bills.
For companies with consumption less than 20 MWh annually, the energy component represents just 42.2% of the total amount. The rest is absorbed by network costs, charges and taxes. For the most energetic enterprises, however, the weight of the energy component reaches 76.1%. The international comparison confirms the Italian competitive disadvantage. In 2025 the average price of electricity paid by companies in Italy exceeded 10.3% of Germany, 51.2% of France and 63% of Spain. A particularly important imbalance for a country in which enterprises with consumption of less than 20 MWh absorb almost 11% of the electricity used by the production system, a higher share than the main European economies. Similar criticism emerges for natural gas. In 2025, small Italian companies paid gas 9.3% more than European companies in the same consumption range. Again, for smaller users, only 51.6% of the total amount is attributable to the energy component. “The cost of energy continues to represent a heavy burden on the competitiveness of our enterprises – says the national president of CNA, Dario Costantini –. It is not acceptable that a small craft workshop, a business or a service company pay much more expensive electricity than a large company. It is a gap that penalizes investments, employment and ability to compete. International tensions show how urgent it is to reduce the energy vulnerability of the country, but above all, it is necessary to intervene on the structure of the bills, lightening the burdens that are disproportionately burdened on smaller enterprises. Structural measures are needed, not temporary interventions: lowering energy costs means concretely supporting the growth of the Italian economy.” For the NAC it is therefore necessary to accelerate on the reduction of the burdens in the bills, to correct the imbalances between the different consumption bands and to strengthen the tools that also allow the micro and small enterprises to access the energy under more competitive conditions.
– photo IPA Agency –
(ITALPRESS).
