“We have to do what the Spaniards did, what the Portuguese did, who got the authorization from Europe: cap the price of electricity”, launched, in September, the president of Medef, Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux. Just recently, several Member States of the European Union (EU) urged the Commission to carry out an in-depth impact study of the “Iberian exception” in terms of energy, in order to see if it could be transposed elsewhere in Europe. .
In France, as at EU level, the debate on the decoupling of gas prices – which determine the price of electricity – from those of other energy sources is recurrent. And the Iberian operation cited as an example.
Even if the device has been suspended since October 19 (the price on the Iberian gas market having fallen below the capped price of 40 euros per megawatt hour [MWh]), the cap has, since its implementation in May, enabled Spanish consumers to save 2.9 billion euros at the end of October, according to the Ministry of Energy Transition. That is a saving of 15% to 30% of their bills compared to the price they would have had to pay without this mechanism.
To obtain from Brussels the recognition of an “Iberian exception” allowing them to decouple the price of gas and the rest of the sources of electricity, Madrid and Lisbon battled for nine months with the European Commission.
Various contracts
Two main reasons finally allowed them to win their case. On the one hand, Spain’s electrical interconnections with the rest of Europe, via France – 2.8% of its installed capacity – are very far from the 10% requested for 2020 and the 15% recommended by Brussels for 2030. On the other hand, the weight of renewable energies, in particular wind power, is particularly notable: they generate almost half of the electricity produced.
Entered into force on June 15, the mechanism, very complex, consists in capping the price of gas so that it is not this energy, the most expensive, which fixes the prices of electricity on the Iberian market.
The difference between the actual cost of gas on the European market and this ceiling is then paid to the gas companies, by means of a levy on the bills of Spanish consumers. As for the rest of the sources of electricity that enter into the energy mix – wind, photovoltaic, nuclear, hydraulic – their price is set according to a complex mathematical formula, which resulted in an average price of 130 euros per MWh. ” Only gas is paid at the price of gas,” is wont to sum up the government.
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