High energy costs are a fact. That they are your problem remains to be proven
21 September 2026, 12:38
Confartigianato has put a number on the table: Italian micro and small businesses pay €3.7 billion more for electricity than the European average, and the bulk of the difference is not the price of energy, it is the tax on top of it — excise duties and system charges weigh 47.4% more on SME bills than in the rest of the Union. The figure is solid and the trade association's fight is a fair one.
For your company, though, that number is not a lever. It is a wait. And waiting for the State to sort out excise duty is not a strategy: it is a bet on something you do not decide.
The number missing from that news is yours
€3.7 billion is a system-wide total. To decide anything you need another number, and it is in your financial statements: how much energy weighs on your value of production.
Take two companies, examples built on paper. The first has a turnover of three million and spends sixty thousand euros on energy: a share of 2%. If the bill goes up by thirty per cent, that is eighteen thousand euros more. Real, irritating, but not the crux for that company. The second has the same three million of turnover and spends two hundred and forty thousand on energy: a share of 8%. There the same increase is worth seventy-two thousand euros, and that is another matter entirely.
Two companies, the same news, two different problems. Anyone who skips this calculation risks chasing the bill while the margin slips away somewhere else: in most manufacturing businesses the weight does not lie in overheads, it lies in the cost of sales.
If it really weighs, it is not cut: it is squeezed
The kilowatt-hour is inside the product. Cut it, and you do not produce. That does not make it untouchable, though: what you manage is not the amount, it is its share of turnover. If it used to weigh 6% and today it weighs 8%, those two points are room for reduction that has been lost, and they are won back where they arise.
There are three levers. The selling price. The quotation built on real costs, the kind that puts into the product cost the electricity absorbed as well, depreciation on machinery valued as new, indirect labour and maintenance: if the quotation starts from there, you decide the margin before accepting the order instead of discovering it afterwards. And the adjustment clause in the supply contract, which ties the price to a public index. The fourth lever, waiting for it to pass, is not a lever.
Here, on the other hand, I disagree
The same day brings another conclusion. CNA Lazio, through its president Michelangelo Melchionno, comments on the national survey ‘Energy and small businesses’ — for 84% of businesses the cost of energy has a significant impact — and argues that high energy costs are holding back investment.
It is a half-truth, and the missing half matters more than the other.
An investment does not stall because energy is expensive. It stalls when nobody has worked out whether it pays. Three numbers are needed, and they are always the same: how much margin it frees up each year, how many months it takes to pay for itself, and whether the DSCR can carry the repayment that comes with it — banks normally require at least 1.2, and below 1 the situation is critical because cash flows do not cover the debt.
If those three numbers are there, the investment goes ahead even with expensive energy. Indeed, it is often the investment itself that cuts consumption, and a high bill makes it more worthwhile, not less. If those three numbers are not there, the investment would not go ahead even with free energy, and high energy costs become the convenient excuse for a decision nobody knows how to take.
What to look at tomorrow morning
Take the latest financial statements and do a single division: cost of energy divided by value of production.
Below 3%, stop talking about it and go and look at the cost of sales, because that is where your margin is won or lost. Above 6%, then it is a serious matter: but it is a matter of price and contract, not of the bill, and it is tackled on the quotation, not at the light switch.
This article was prompted by a news item published in ANSA.