For a little over a decade, Spanish electricity customers have been paying their electricity bills every month. millionaire aid to big industry. Several dozen industrial plants have offered to stop their production to reduce electricity consumption and thus avoid potential supply security issues or market imbalances that could cause an increase in electricity prices.
Between 2008 and mid-2020, major industrial groups generated just over 5,260 million in revenue. According to data from the former National Energy Commission and the current National Markets and Competition Commission, the euro cuttability servicemechanism that guarantees that these factories will stop or reduce their electricity consumption in the event of a power outage risk or large price increases.
Two years ago, at the request of the European Commission, the current Government ended the biennial auction system in which these subsidies are distributed, and is waiting to devise a new aid mechanism. But the system has never been updated. Major industry now offers Admin to recover downtime service It is in the midst of the energy crisis as a way to lower the energy bill and reduce industrial energy consumption as part of Spain’s contingency plan that it will send to Brussels in the coming weeks.
During the long decade the mechanism was in operation in Spain, it was only applied to provide assistance to large industrial electricity consumers, but major Spanish industry now wants to expand it to natural gas consuming factories. Association of Companies with Large Energy Consumption (AEGE) and work organization Industrial Gas.
Employers of electro-intensive consumers and employers of gas-intensive consumers have sent this proposal to the Ministry of Ecological Transition and the Ministry of Industry, led by Teresa Ribera and Reyes Maroto, respectively, and action is being taken, according to government sources. has been analyzed as one of the possible formulas, but there is no final decision yet on whether it will be part of the package of energy conservation initiatives as a shield against Russia’s pulse.
The government emphasizes that its main aim is not to have to impose supply cuts to either homes or industry during this winter as part of its energy saving plan. Downtime service does not mean to apply these interrupts, but rather companies would voluntarily offer to reduce or stop consumption in exchange for a bonus. It is insisted from the industrial sector that aid cannot be accepted as such, it is for the payment of a service and can be useful in an emergency in the midst of an energy crisis to reduce aid. both electricity and electricity consumption. gas.
Ten years without stopping
Between 2008 and 2017, in the event of the incompatibility of electricity supply and demand threatening the continuity of supply and the risk of power outages, the industrial groups benefiting from the assistance had to stop for purely technical reasons. Over the years, industries have taken a toll for offering to stop, but almost without ever being forced to stop.
The data is confidential, but sources familiar with the system state that: for ten years factories had to stop for only five hours (apart from the system tests that factories have to do periodically) and received around 5,000m euros.
At the end of 2017, the Mariano Rajoy Government mandated that companies participating in the cut-off service also reduce consumption for economic reasons if there is a risk of a sharp increase in prices. In the following years and until the mechanism stopped in mid-2020, the beneficiary companies had to make more than fifty stops for these economic reasons and to avoid price increases.
Source: Informacion
Christina Moncayo is a contributing writer for “Social Bites”. Her focus is on the gaming industry and she provides in-depth coverage of the latest news and trends in the world of gaming.