Last year, the government rolled out a series of decrees aimed at limiting the impact of rising electricity and fuel costs on households and businesses. The regulator implemented a system of controls to ensure energy companies do not reap extraordinary profits from the price surge and that all measures, such as a 20-cent per liter discount, are properly applied across the market.
The executive branch distrusts large corporations, so much of this new oversight responsibility has fallen to the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) to monitor major energy groups. In recent months, the agency has faced a heavy load of new mandates, which has significantly increased work for the Energy Department, already stretched thin by scarce personnel.
Under the command of its leadership, including President Cani Fernandez, the CNMC has warned about personnel shortages and called for a strengthened workforce so the energy sector can fulfill its expanded duties without neglecting its usual responsibilities. The institution asked the Ministry of Finance to increase staffing, but only two-thirds of the requested expansion has been approved so far.
Requests for additional resources reached the level of 42 new positions to take on the directorate’s expanded energy remit. The Inter-ministerial Remuneration Commission, fully under the Ministry of Finance and also handling public service matters, has authorized 28 new civil service posts. The CNMC’s energy-related reporting indicates this information comes from the CNMC itself, as confirmed by a note from a major national newspaper group.
Among the newly approved positions, 18 are allocated to the Director of Energy, eight to the Secretary-General for energy affairs, and two to the Transport sector. There are still pending authorizations for another 14 posts that the agency has requested, with the expectation of rapid progress. At present, the CNMC Energy Directorate counts 114 staff members, including five civil servants and 109 workers.
However, approving positions does not automatically mean immediate recruitment. The regulator notes that recruitment is a process, not a switch. It emphasizes that there are no extra staff to deploy until the new roles are created, and the recruitment drive begins within the State Administration, followed by comprehensive training for those involved.
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The government put in place a system last September designed to curb potential windfalls from higher energy prices. The plan compelled certain nuclear, hydroelectric, and renewable producers to return what were deemed excessive incomes earned by selling electricity at wholesale prices that surged due to higher gas costs and CO2 emission rights, costs not fully covered by these technologies.
Electric utilities issue thousands of contracts each month to disclose conditions and prices. These contracts represent the supplies offered to customers under long-term bilateral agreements, reducing the risk of service interruptions. The high volume of contracts first passes through Red Eléctrica de España (REE), the system operator tasked by the government with calculating monthly repayments, and then moves on to the National Markets and Competition Commission for review.
Subsequently, the government leveraged the macro-decree for anti-crisis measures tied to the Ukraine conflict to reexamine the framework, aiming to reduce excess profits on encounters priced above a threshold of 67 euros per megawatt hour. For large utilities, a specialized surveillance mechanism was set up to ensure that what are popularly known as “unexpected profits” are not passed through the contract chain to end consumers at inflated rates.
Major electricity groups—notably Iberdrola, Endesa, Naturgy, EDP, and Repsol—often sell much of their production directly to their internal marketers or to downstream companies within their corporate groups. The government has chosen to focus on such intragroup contracts and will monitor the final prices that marketers pass to consumers, a shift that increases the number of contracts staged through REE and heightens the CNMC’s workload during reviews of those contracts that show sharp price spikes. This remains an ongoing challenge for the agency and the market alike.
Recently, the CNMC has also had to verify that gas stations properly applied the 20-cent per liter discount for all drivers, as mandated by the government to halt the rise in fuel costs. Additional responsibilities have included an urgent recalculation (Recore) of thousands of renewable energy utilities tied to guaranteed returns by law and a new assessment of how the cost of the electricity social bonus should be distributed among all industry players, including discounts for vulnerable households.