The bill creating the Fund for the Sustainability of the Electric System (Fnsse) that was approved by the Council of Ministers and is now being processed in the Congress of Deputies may imply a reduction in the electricity bill but also an increase in the cost of the main non-electric energy uses in Spain.
An analysis of the impact it will have on consumers carried out by Sedigas concludes that the measure would mainly affect the most depopulated areas and the most vulnerable consumers. Besides, the Alliance for the Competitiveness of the Spanish Industry He has warned of the negative impact that the national industry will have if the bill is not modified.
These analyzes indicate that the reform may lower the price of electricity, but it will generate a rise in fuel and gas bills for both citizens and companies. In this way, the Fnsse would act, according to these analyses, as a new tax to both fuels and natural gas, which implies a transfer of income from electricity consumers to citizens, farmers, taxi drivers and businessmen who use fuels or use natural gas in their production.
The fund would benefit domestic electricity consumers and would harm gas consumers and all of them for diesel and gasoline, since the cost will be about 7.5 cents of euros per liter of fuel. If this were so, it would be a contradiction that the Government is preparing a extension of the discount of 20 cents in the liter of fuel because at the same time it would charge gasoline with 7 cents of extra ‘tax’.
In addition, the application of the National Fund for the Sustainability of the Electric System will create a territorial inequality, according to the Sedigas analysis. Some parties and territories denounce that the new law will mean a transfer of income from the communities and provinces of the interior of Spain to the coastal, sun and beach areas, and the islands. In other words, customers from colder areas, from the interior of the peninsula, such as Teruel o Soria, will pay the ‘bill’ of the energy reform for being territories with more gas and fuel consumption, which are the energies that will increase their price so that electricity is lowered. The analysis warns that this transfer of costs between sectors would cause a redistribution of income in favor of mostly electricity consumers (urban, temperate zone and upper-middle class) against the rest of society.
The Institute for the Diversification and Saving of Energy (IDAE) dependent on the Ministry for the Ecological Transition, which has participated in the process of preparing this reform, makes in one of its latest reports a comparison of gas consumption in the country taking as main zones the Atlantic-north, the Mediterranean and the continental. The data conclude that the average consumption of gas in the Cantabrian strip is 7,143 kWh on average per householdin inland Spain it reaches 10,511 kWh per household and in the Mediterranean and the islands it stays at 6,233 kWh.
The inland provinces, the coldest, consume an average of 68% more gas than those on the coast and the islands. Based on these data, the National Fund for the Sustainability of the Electricity System, which, according to the Minister of Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, “will allow a reduction of at least 13% in the electricity bill of electricity consumers”, could penalize to the territories that consume the most gas and fuels.