The Spanish government plans to allocate an additional € 100 million to mitigate the impact of rising electricity prices, which will help 1.2 million vulnerable Spanish households before winter.
Meanwhile, the prime minister acknowledged that his proposal for a Community response to the energy crisis met with resistance from Brussels but insisted that the European Council begin to consider addressing the energy price problem.
“It is obvious that we have to do something at the European level, that we will have to revise this framework and the directive at the community level. If it is obvious in vaccination that we were stronger together, then why don’t we do the same with the gas-producing countries? If we weigh more, being 400 million people [EU population] instead of 47 million, why don’t we move down this path of joint negotiations on gas purchases against large countries such as China or India,” he asked.
President Sánchez believes that such an approach could be helpful in the face of price speculation in the CO₂ emissions market. “In Europe, things are going slower than I would like, but we are making progress. I am stubborn, and we will achieve the EU’s approach to the energy crisis,” he said.
In the primary European markets, electricity prices have been rising for several months. Behind this rise are higher gas prices on international markets and European CO₂ emission rights, fueled by a strong recovery in demand following the shutdown caused by the pandemic. In Spain, the average daily price per megawatt-hour (MWh) on the wholesale market has exceeded € 200 for 12 consecutive days, which would have been unthinkable just a few months ago.
Faced with this price hike, the prime minister pledged that consumers’ electricity bills would end in 2021 at the same level as 2018. To achieve this goal, the government launched a shocking plan in mid-September that extends tax cuts and includes a cut in emergency profits.