The Third Vice President and Minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, has described as “scandalous” the situation that the Ricobayo (Zamora) and Valdecañas (Cáceres) reservoirs are suffering, both managed by Iberdrola, given the “drastic ” reduction of its waters and has assured that the electric company is already being investigated, to which a letter has been sent “to tell it that this cannot be.”
“It is not reasonable to empty a reservoir in practically 6 weeks as has happened in Zamora,” denounced the third vice president in an interview on La Sexta. Given this, the minister has advanced that article 55 of the Water Law will have to be applied, where it is expected that for extraordinary reasons limitations can be introduced to the emptying of the flow of the reservoirs.
Ribera explained that this situation has to do with the concession clauses, which probably did not provide for an intervention to guarantee ecological and minimum flows in the reservoirs, but rather a volume of water granted per year. “That is why the company justifies that they are complying with all the requirements and this seems scandalous to me,” he remarked.
The minister argued that water cannot remain in a maximum volume allowed per year without any type of criteria regarding its distribution and use over time and therefore managed directly by the concessionaire company in accordance with “what at any time economically suits them best.” “This is legitimate but it is not reasonable for it to happen, which is why we want to intervene as soon as possible,” she pointed out.
Ribera: “The company justifies that they are complying with all the requirements and this seems scandalous to me”
Ribera has remarked that the Government has contacted the company and has announced that the Secretary of State for the Environment will have a meeting next week with the mayors of the affected areas. “We cannot allow this to happen. Water is a scarce commodity as important for the well-being of families and economic activity as electricity is,” he remarked.
Precisely organizations such as Facua-Consumers in Action have asked the National Competition Market Commission (CNMC) this Friday to investigate the “drastic” reduction of water in case the company could be taking advantage of the situation of the new rates and the increase in the cost of electricity to release more water than it should and thus multiply its hydroelectric production.
Short-term measurements with light
Asked about the short-term measures to alleviate the rise in electricity, which this week has marked several historical highs, the minister has assured that the Government will maintain the social shield and an “adequate” tax treatment.
It should be remembered that until the end of the year, as well as the suspension of the 7% tax on electricity generation for three months, until September.
Ribera has insisted that the current high price of electricity cannot be resolved “overnight”, nor with a decree in the Official State Gazette (BOE). “To say that this is resolved with a decree law is to generate a false expectation,” Ribera said after assuring that “whoever says that there is some measure that can change things from one day to the next, with a publication in the BOE of something magical, either he has no idea what he’s talking about or he’s doing cheap demagogy”.
Given the high price of electricity due to the high price of CO2 and gas, the minister said that the marginalist market does not respond to a reality in which there are different technological costs. “This debate must be opened in Europe”, she has insisted.
A public energy company?
The third vice president slipped this week the possibility that they will be released, in order to be able to reduce the electricity rate.
Today he has detailed that in Spain there is a significant number of hydroelectric exploitations, more than 200, whose concession ends throughout this decade, two of them in two years.
However, he recalled that the country already has hydroelectric plants managed by hydrographic confederations, so now the Government intends to “work and update the conditions”, and see if a public company is created or managed directly by the hydrographic basins.
“The conditions in which the hydroelectric concessions were signed have nothing to do with the situations now, which is why we are studying how to better manage it and do it centrally,” he clarified.
The minister has pointed out that, after addressing this issue, the public company would be subject to the same European rules, so it could not be sold below the price, because that would be considered by the European Commission as state aid, nor could it have a size as significant as other determining operators could have in the short term.
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