The Iberian mechanism that limited the price of gas used to produce electricity made electricity cheaper by 31.8% for consumers with regulated rates in Spain and reduced Spanish inflation by 2022, according to a study published this Thursday.
This mechanism, agreed by Spain and Portugal with the European Union, has been in force since June 15, 2022 and, until the end of last year, the Spanish regulated tariff was 31.8% “cheaper than it would be in a world without the Iberian Peninsula”. exception”, concludes the study by the ESADE business school, based in Barcelona, signed by four researchers, Manuel Hidalgo-Pérez, Ramón Mateo Escobar, Natalia Collado Van-Baumberghen and Jorge Galindo.
“According to our estimate, the savings throughout 2022 was about 209 euros per family,” write the researchers in the study to which Lusa had access.
Given the number of electricity contracts in Spain affected by the Iberian mechanism, the “total savings” last year for these consumers was between 1,880 and 2,100 million euros, according to the same study.
This decline in electricity prices in Spain ended up having an impact on Spanish inflation last year, according to the researchers’ conclusions.
Thus, average inflation for 2022 in Spain “would have been 0.3 points higher” without the Iberian mechanism, that is, it would have been 8.7% and not 8.4%.
Inflation is the indicator that reveals the increase in prices in a country in relation to the same period of the previous year.
In the Eurozone countries (those with the single European currency), average inflation in 2022 was 8.38%, standing at 9.2% at the end of December.
The regulated electricity tariff in Spain, or Voluntary Price for the Small Consumer (PVPC), is indexed to the price of gas in the wholesale market, that is, the price that electricity companies pay when they buy gas to produce electricity.
With the Iberian mechanism, a maximum price was defined for the gas used in the production of electricity and the producing companies are compensated for the difference with respect to the real value in the market.
The compensation is shared, in Spain, by consumers who have a regulated rate, to which are added new customers and consumers who have other rates and renew their contracts.
ESADE Business School researchers conclude, in the study released today, that the application of this mechanism also had a “disadvantage”, such as the increased consumption of gas to produce electricity, contrary to national and European reduction targets.
Still on this negative side are the lower electricity prices in Spain compared to neighboring countries, which may have “facilitated the increase in exports” to France of electricity that is favorably subsidized for French consumers, but ” at the expense of the Spanish.
In 2022, the study underlines, electricity exports from Spain to France “more than doubled those of 2021 and imports were reduced by less than half, completely reversing the traditional balance between the two countries”, while global exchange increased 56.3%.
“It is very likely” that without the Iberian mechanism “we would not have observed similar levels of exports,” conclude the authors of the study.
Regarding the greater consumption of gas to produce electricity in Spain last year, the researchers state that, however, “the greatest increase occurred in the summer months”, which also suggests an influence of the drought, which prevented, for For example, hydroelectric generation. , which depends on the water stored in the dams.
Measures such as the Iberian mechanism “respond to the urgency” of the current situation, generated by the war in Ukraine, “in an apparently agile way”, leaving, however, the debate on “structural changes at the Spanish and European level”, although “structural reform and specific action are not, in theory, incompatible”, argue the authors of the ESADE study.
“The sense of effectiveness in the short term without specific data feeds the incentive for policymakers to maintain measures that were initially intended to be temporary,” they add.
The Iberian mechanism is in force until May, but Portugal and Spain have already asked the European Commission to extend the measure.
Source: TSF
