And yet it moves: A study of natural gas consumption in Italy at the turn of the 2022 energy crisis

This paper presents the first econometric analysis of Italian residential natural gas consumption at the turn of the 2022 energy crisis. Using daily data from 2012 to 2025 and applying the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) and Error Correction Model (ECM) methodologies, we investigate how the unprecedented price shocks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine affected Italian households’ consumption patterns. Our analysis demonstrates that the crisis triggered a persistent transformation in consumers’ behavior that extends beyond the immediate crisis period. Before December 2021, natural gas demand was essentially price-inelastic. However, the energy crisis altered this relationship, with price elasticity increasing from virtually zero to 0.34 by 2023 — a transformation that persists even as prices have moderated. The elasticity is even larger (up to 1.90) when we refer to the price-responsive component of demand. Moreover, the decomposition of total demand into heating and baseload components reveals that space heating demand served as the primary adjustment mechanism during the crisis. We estimate approximately 11.9 billion cubic meters in savings between 2022 and 2025, translating to 13 billion euros in financial savings. Finally, we find evidence that the lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic and the policy measures introduced in 2022–2023 to incentivize gas savings had a limited effect on gas consumption.