Regulation in Italy

Tariff regulation is an essential condition for enhancing the infrastructure capital from an economic perspective and for channelling investments into the network. Today, in fact, 96% of Snam’s revenues are regulated.

Snam interacts with the ARERA (Italian Regulatory Authority for Electricity Gas and Water) in the following ways:

• responding, directly or through trade associations, to public consultations held by the Authority in relation to the industry activities in order to define new standards or to review the standards in force;
• participating in the technical working groups established by the Authority with regard to the evolution of the regulatory framework;
• drafting amendments to the Transportation, Storage, and Regasification Network Codes, later submitted to the Authority for approval;
• participating in the collection of data and the investigations carried out in the course of the year for the purposes of assessing the state of the industry or of the individual services. It periodically sends the data requested to comply with the information requirements.

In 2018, Snam contributed to the development of the regulatory system by providing the Authority with numerous contributions and proposals. Specifically, the activity concerned the definition of the tariff and transport service criteria for the fifth regulatory period (2020-2023), both under the scope of public consultation processes and through specific meetings. In this context – in the light of the energy transition process – innovative uses of the transportation network and technologies for the integration of renewable gases (such as, for example, biomethane and other green gases) were also examined in depth. From the perspective of the development of the regulatory system in terms of output based arrangements, guidelines in the preparation of the Ten Year Plans were also adopted and those for the definition of cost-benefit analysis methodologies for new investment in infrastructure development.

In relation to the services offered, new storage products were introduced and new market-based methodologies for the transfer of the regasification capacities of the LNG terminals, with the aim of meeting and supporting the increasing flexibility requirements of infrastructure users. Lastly, Snam contributed to the total redesigning of the settlement scheme to promote a better allocation of quantities of energy withdrawn from the network by its customers.