The Secretary of State for Energy, Sara Aagesen , affirmed this Friday that the Government is not talking about nationalizing any energy company and has explained that it is analyzing, in the case of hydraulic operations, what is the best response, in the face of the escalation in the price of light.
“We are not saying that we are going to make a public energy company, we are saying that we are going to analyze in the case of hydraulic operations what is the best response,” the Secretary of State clarified in an interview on Onda Cero collected by Europa Press .
These words come a day after the third vice president of the Government and Minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera , slipped the possibility of creating a public company to manage the hydroelectric concessions that are being released, in order to be able to reduce the light tariff.
In this sense, Ribera opened the door to “dispose of all hydroelectric energy through a different concession system or through a public company as the hydroelectric concessions are released, which allows to intervene or facilitate another way of offering energy.”
On this, Aagesen explained that the Government is working to respond to those concessions that expire and end their concession, prioritizing those that have to do with climate change, water needs, as well as social and energy needs. “We are not prejudging who is going to manage these concessions, but we are analyzing which option would maximize those needs,” he stressed.
The Bank of Spain explains why the price of electricity shoots up after setting another all-time high
The Bank of Spain explains why the price of electricity shoots up after setting another all-time high
The Secretary of State has indicated that creating or not a public company with these concessions does not offer an immediate response to lower the bill, and has affirmed that in the next 15-20 days the Government will not have an answer on the expired concessions. “Quick solutions are not the best. We are looking for solutions that provide a robust response,” he remarked.
Thus, it has reaffirmed the idea that “magic formulas do not exist to solve problems” and has insisted that “patches” are not the solution that can be given to consumers. However, he stressed that the “immediate” measure that the Government has already adopted is the reduction of VAT from 21% to 10% on the electricity bill .
Among the other measures that the Government is considering, “they do not have an immediate impact”, since the change in energy use cannot be carried out “overnight” , although it has assured that this situation is accelerating to not be dependent on fossil fuels.
The Secretary of State has regretted that they continue to reach historical highs “day after day” in energy prices and has advanced that in the short term there will be a continuation of high gas and CO2 prices.
“Claudication” to Podemos
The deputy spokesman for the PP Parliamentary Group in Congress, Mario Garcés , said this Friday that the creation of a public energy company would mean “the definitive surrender of socialism to the communism of Podemos.”
Garcés, in statements to Radio Intereconomía collected by EP , pointed out that the electricity problem in Spain does not have to do with public and private matters, but rather with seeking efficiency in the market.
This requires, in his opinion, that a model be adopted in which only the energy consumed is paid and the compensatory costs are transferred to the General State Budgets (PGE), but not to the citizens.
For her part, the coordinator of Ciudadanos Madrid and vice mayor of the capital, Begoña Villacís , has described this Friday as “foolish, madness and populist” the possibility of creating a public electricity company in Spain, and has asked the central government “not to copy what they do in Venezuela. “
Echenique asks for a ‘decree’
The spokesman for United We Can in Congress, Pablo Echenique , has stated that “tomorrow” the price of the megawatt / hour could be limited as in France by means of a royal decree law. In an interview last night on Cadena Ser collected by Efe , Echenique insisted on the need to create “a public energy company” that avoids “price manipulation.”
“A public energy company could be created to start recovering the hydroelectric leaps whose concessions are expiring,” he said, according to the station on its website. “Spain had a public energy company, Endesa, which was sold to the Italian State and is now owned by Enel, an Italian public company,” he recalled.
For Echenique, “if Spain had a public energy company of a considerable size, when it comes to bidding in the electricity market for the megawatt / hour we would not see the price manipulation that we see at the moment”. On this issue of the price of electricity, Echenique has recognized that in the Government there is a “difference in speed” between the coalition partners .
