2023-06-19 04:15:00
The large Asturian industry fears losing aid to pay the energy bill when the Government of Spain doubles the number of beneficiaries of the compensation of the electro-intensive consumer statute. For this reason, AEGE, the association that brings together the largest energy consumers in the region – headed by ArcelorMittal and Asturiana de Zinc (Azsa) – calls on the Government to endow the calls for aid included in the “sufficient” budget statute. so that these industries do not see their compensation diminished and do not suffer an increase in energy cost differentials with respect to their main European competitors.
The Council of Ministers approved last Tuesday the modification of the statute of the electro-intensive consumer to expand the number of industries benefiting from the aid, which goes from 612 to 1,180 by adding new sectors: those considered “at risk” of relocation that are added to the sectors “at significant risk” of relocation that already received aid. “It is an adaptation to European regulations that does not introduce significant changes. In theory, it should not affect the amount of compensation that the largest energy consumers were already receiving, but it does not affect the calls for aid that are launched from now on. If the budget is adapted to the number of beneficiaries, then we will have a problem because aid will be lost,” he said. Pedro Gonzalezgeneral director of AEGE, to this newspaper.
At the moment, for this year 91 million euros have been budgeted to finance the measures of the statute, mainly compensations to the industry for charges on the electricity bill for the financing of renewables, high-efficiency cogeneration and extra costs of generation in non-peninsular territories. It is an amount similar to that of previous years. “If the budget of the calls is not adapted to the new number of beneficiaries and the available money is apportioned, the industries that already received the aid will lose out,” said Pedro González. The opinion is shared by the president of the Asturian Federation of Businessmen (FADE), María Calvo, who in the general assembly of the employers’ association held last Friday pointed out that with the reform of the statute “the number of receiving industries is increased, but not the funds earmarked for them, which, if not corrected, will harm large Asturian consumers”.
The cost of tolls
In addition, this new uncertainty is added to that of the extension or not of the exceptional reduction of the electricity bill from July 1. The Government of Spain is still considering whether to extend the 80% reduction in the cost of access tolls to the transmission and distribution networks of the electro-intensive industry for a longer period of time, an exceptional measure due to the increase in the cost of energy in the context of the war in the Ukraine that although it has not ended the disadvantage of the Spanish factories with respect to the energy costs of their French or German competitors, it has helped to iron it out. “It is one of the few exceptional measures of the Government in the context of the energy crisis whose validity ends on June 30. Most of them last until the end of the year,” said the general secretary of AEGE, who hopes that the measure “will be extended at least until the end of the year, although what we are demanding is that this provisional reduction in tolls be definitive, as in other European countries, and be incorporated into the statute for electro-intensive consumers”.
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