The wholesale electricity market pulverizes Filomena's price for this Friday
The increase in the price of the wholesale electricity market has not reached a ceiling. The average price of the so-called pool for this Friday is 99.8 euros per MWh, according to OMIE data. It is the second highest in history, higher than the 94.99 euros last January 8, when the storm Filomena arrived. It is only behind the 103.76 euros of January 11, 2002.
This price comes after June closed with the highest monthly average in history in the pool, 83.29 euros per MWh, in an escalation that has forced the Government to urgently approve a reduction in VAT on electricity up to 10% and to temporarily suspend the tax on generators. The rise is directly reflected in the contracts covered by the regulated rate of the voluntary price to small consumers (PVPC), which according to experts, the Government and consumer associations, is cheaper than the offers of the so-called free market.
The spectacular increase in recent weeks comes in a context in which natural gas prices (which marks the price charged by all technologies because it is a marginalist market) have soared to 33.79 euros MWh, according to data from the Migbas, and with the ton of CO2 beating a new historical maximum of 58 euros. The rise will not subside in the short term and the Government fears that the upward price context lasts "months", as the fourth vice president, Teresa Ribera, warned in Congress on Tuesday.
The Government, in addition to this temporary reduction in VAT as long as these high prices continue, has also proposed as "structural" measures a fund to remove the cost of the premiums to the oldest renewables from the tariff and a blueprint for drain so-called out-of-the-blue hydro and nuclear profits you just received the endorsement of the National Commission of Markets and Competition (CNMC) and that the electricity companies reject.
A part of the Executive (Minister Alberto Garzón) has proposed to accelerate the cut to electricity and approve it by decree, a way that Ribera rejects because he considers it more exposed to the possible resources of the companies. But the Executive does not rule out more measures: the vice president has sent a letter to the vice president of the European Commission and person in charge of the European Green Deal, Frans Timmermans, to address a reform of the design of the European electricity market and "how to evolve" in the same way Keep it "simple" and send "clear signals" and the cost of CO2 does not generate "distortions" in electricity prices.
Ribera referred on Tuesday to the possibility of paying a different price to older power plants through so-called "contracts for differences", but "today it is difficult for them to fit into the European response. "We need a job and coverage unless we want to leave the EU or we want sanctions from the European institutions to accommodate this change," "building confidence," he said.
In that appearance, in which he again expressed his rejection of the creation of a public energy company that manages hydroelectric concessions that are going to expire Although he pointed out that there are "interesting" experiences, Ribera attributed the pool's escalation to the "extraordinary increase in gas and CO2 in international markets", which is "likely to continue for at least a few months" and which, he said, is " intimately linked ”to the environmental commitments of Europe and the United States. Climate change "explains part" of this rise and fossil fuels, he insisted, are the "great structural problem."
