The Spanish Popular Party said this Thursday that the Iberian mechanism for the price of gas used to produce electricity is “a failureand there are consumers affected by the compensation paid to electricity companies, which the government denies.
“They will assume the failure of the Iberian mechanism that did not prevent us from paying until the days that elapse Four times more expensive to light than a year ago?”, questioned the parliamentary leader of the Popular Party (PP, right) in the Spanish parliament, Concepción Gamarra (known as Cuca Gamarra), during a debate addressed to the Government, led by the socialists.
The deputy of the largest opposition party in Spain asked the Spaniards to “look at the last bill” of the light they received and notice that it has a “new cost” That it’s called “adjustment mechanismof the decree-law that put into force, on June 14, the so-called Iberian mechanism for limiting the price of gas for the production of electricity.
According to the deputy, this “adjustment mechanism” increased the bills of affected consumers between 25% and 34% compared to what they paid before the adoption of the Iberian mechanism, which the governments of Portugal and Spain agreed with the European Commission . .
the mechanism establishes that electricity companies are compensated for the maximum price difference defined by this instrument and the real value of gas in the wholesale market, which skyrocketed, above all, after the start of the war in Ukraine, on February 24, as a result of a Russian military attack.
The compensation to the companies is shared by the consumers of those designated, in Spain, “regulated rate“, which is indexed to the price of gas in the wholesale market.
In the case of Spain, 40% of electricity consumers have this rate and they represent the majority of the market, contrary to what happens in other countries, such as Portugal.
As for consumers with a fixed rate, they are only affected by this compensation as the contracts they have are renewed or new contracts are signed.
The Spanish Government – like the Portuguese – has said that the Iberian mechanism did not prevent the increase in light, but rather made it much lower than it would have been if it had not existed, as is happening in other European countries.
This has been repeated this day, in the same parliamentary debate, by the Minister in charge of Transport, Raquel Sánchez, who has said that we Spaniards today are paying for electricity at prices “two or three times” lower than consumers “in the main European countries” and that there have already been savings in these costs of 22 million euros per day since the Iberian mechanism came into force.
In the same debate, the PP, which has governed Spain in alternation with the Socialists (PSOE) for the last 40 years, accused the current left-wing government of having increased the need for Russian gas in Spain with “a brightdiplomatic policy towards Algeria, which led to the closure of a gas pipeline between the two countries.
The deputy, who said that the regasification infrastructures that Spain has are the work of the PP, which can now serve the rest of Europe to reduce dependence on Russian gas, also defended the increase in energy production in the Spanish nuclear power plants, something that the party has come to claim.
Nuclear power is a form of “ensure adequate energy supply at an affordable price”, said Cuca Gamarra, who has asked the Spanish Government, which intends to deactivate nuclear power plants, to abandon “ideologies and sectarianism”.
Source: Observadora
