The mechanism designed by the Spanish Government to intervene in the price of electricity by limiting the cost of gas-fired power plants is taking shape after the European Union has agreed to grant Spain and Portugal the special treatment of "energy island" to apply measures individuals compared to other countries.
Both governments have been working on proposals for weeks and the work has accelerated in recent days to arrive with the homework done at
the European Council
last Friday.
The Government has obtained the endorsement of its partners, but now it has to urgently define its intervention mechanism in detail and send it to the
European Commission
for supervision and approval.
These are measures of enormous technical complexity and the objective is to avoid a new regulatory stumble like the one that the country suffered last September with the 'hachazo' to the benefit of the electricity companies that had to be suspended just a month later.
The great fear of Brussels is that the Spanish intervention breaks the unity of the market in Europe and distorts the price of electricity in other countries.
Pedro Sánchez
has defended in recent days that the risk here is minimal because the capacity of the electrical interconnection with France barely reaches 3%, but this argument is insufficient and the Commission asks for technical mechanisms that really limit the effect of the proposal to the Iberian Peninsula.
And that mechanism will be called
"border price"
, according to the technical documents circulating these days between Madrid and Lisbon to which EL MUNDO has had access.
The measure consists of establishing a double price for electricity in the Spanish market through two different auctions.
The first will be done simultaneously with other European markets and will establish that "border price" that will regulate the electricity interconnection with the French neighbor.
Next, Spain will hold a new auction in which the electricity companies with
gas and coal plants
would already use the limited price of gas set by the Spanish Government -still undefined- and which will then be compensated in an item with a charge to the electricity bill of national consumers.
In this way, the wholesale price of electricity in Spain will be significantly lower than that registered at the border and this, in turn, will be quite similar to that of other European markets.
The issue of interconnections has been one of the most complex and delicate analyzed by technicians of the electrical system in a week that has been frenetic at the energy level.
The technical texts worked out jointly by the Spanish and Portuguese Governments through the
Iberian Electricity Market Operator (Omie)
in fact include a special situation for the French interconnection that includes the limitation of the amount of electricity exported to the neighboring country to avoid border arbitrations, as this newspaper advanced last Friday.
This is a unique situation in a Europe that boasts open borders and, due to its exceptional nature, will be limited to a maximum of three months.
For this reason, Spanish companies will only be able to sell to France the energy that they offer in the first auction, that is, the one that will result in prices similar to those of the rest of the continent.
This avoids the potential temptation for companies to produce more electricity with subsidized gas in Spain and sell it at a much higher price in other European markets.
The idea of the Spanish and Portuguese governments is to use the price set by the
Iberian Gas Market (Mibgas)
as an index to establish the compensation.
The text warns the electricity companies that any manipulation of their offers to obtain greater compensation from the Spanish consumer will be considered a
"very serious infringement" of the Electricity Sector Law.
In other words, the draft threatens sanctions of up to
60 million euros
to the companies that own gas, coal and cogeneration power plants that can benefit from the measure.
Sources from the electricity sector explain that the draft with which Spain and Portugal are working is still subject to change and could be modified in the coming days.
The Government's intention is to send it this week to Brussels to obtain its support and for it to come into force "in three or four weeks", as Vice President
Teresa Ribera herself points out.
Brussels promised this Friday to carry out a rapid evaluation of the measures, although the technicians consulted by this newspaper regret the rush and warn that these are enormously complex issues that could lead to unwanted collateral effects if there is a minimum error in their regulation.
For this reason, the Executive seeks in this case, and unlike the September cut, that the measure be agreed with the electricity companies to avoid potential litigation.
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