The Ministry of Ecological Transition has not just hit the key with regard to the social bonus for electricity. The department headed by Teresa Ribera took advantage of Royal Decree-Law 6/2022 to put into operation a new financing system for the social bonus after the Supreme Court decided to overthrow -and it has already been three times- the system developed by the Government of the day .
Given the existing legal vacuum, after the judgments of the Administrative Litigation Chamber, the Government considered that it was empowered to impose a new system that has already begun to raise some suspicions and could open the door to new resources.
RDL 6/2022 introduces a series of measures in the energy field that have caused alarm among independent electricity marketers, since they consider that the Government is causing a deep setback in the liberalization process for the benefit of large companies such as Iberdrola , Endesa, Naturgy, Repsol or EDP. In fact, they say that during the month of December practically all the independent marketers lost clients to the dominant operators.
Fenie Energía, the largest independent electricity marketer, will hold a round of contacts with political parties throughout this week to demand changes to this rule.
The Congress of Deputies will vote this coming Thursday for the validation of said Royal Decree-Law, but the sector is already calling for its processing as a Bill so that corrective measures can be included within a package whose objective is to respond to the economic consequences and social aspects of the war in Ukraine.
Fenie Energia focuses its criticism of the measure on four points: the new regulation of the social bonus, the situation of the regulated natural gas tariff, the problems of meter readings and the lack of specificity from the Government regarding primary energy auctions. .
Regarding the social bonus, the marketer assures that the Government’s proposal can generate a significant problem in renewables, in addition to independent electricity marketers.
With the new system, renewable energy producers will have to contribute 1 euro for each MWh they generate to meet the costs of the social bond. This measure, as explained by Fenie Energía, may make it necessary to review the application of the level of reasonable profitability for the plants that are part of the Recore, but it also poses a problem for those that have attended renewable auctions with prices between 28 and 30 euros/MWh, which they see as well as their margins are further reduced before their parks start operating.
With regard to the distributors, Fenie Energia regrets the enormous weight that the sector has been charged with 11 euros per customer regardless of their size, an extreme that they consider is not progressive and that penalizes companies dedicated to domestic customers and the lower amounts that have to deal with transport or distribution stand out.
Industry sources explain that the CNMC has a month to analyze these amounts (which is about to end) and recall that the set values depend on the pool that is now through the roof.
At a higher pool price, a higher amount must be financed but if it falls, said amount can also be reduced.
Fenie assures that the best system would be to carry out something similar to the thermal social bonus with the electric one. In fact, the fifteenth additional provision of this decree also includes an extension of the coverage of the thermal social bonus to the beneficiaries of the electricity social bonus, and for this it approves a credit supplement of 75 million for the Ministry of Ecological Transition.
Fenie also regrets that the Government has maintained the intervention of the regulated gas tariff, since in this way it continues to swell a deficit that will force future tariffs to be much higher in the regulated market and an immediate exit from it can be generated. and remain a difficult cost to assume for the system. At the moment, the CNMC has not made the settlement data public.
Invoice delays
The marketer also complains about the image problems that the sector is suffering due to the delays in meter readings by distributors and recalls that there is currently no penalty regime for these situations. In fact, the CNMC was only able to force the companies to allow the payments of the trading companies to be deferred and many estimates are being produced for clients with more than 15 kv contracted (SMEs).
Fenie Energía also demands that the Government quickly launch the primary energy auctions that it approved last year. For the company, the current situation is essential to access energy.
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