The president of the Government, Pedro Sanchezannounced this Thursday in Congress a new energy package to “protect the 40% of households“which will mobilize 3,000 million euros. Within that package, Sánchez cited two measures, As the Reinforcement of the electric and thermal social bonus and the reduction of the gas bill for the neighboring communities, that they had already been announced by the Third Vice President and Minister for Energy Transition, Teresa Ribera, earlier this week in the presentation of the contingency plan, but without any specifics. Two days later, Sánchez added the detail. The main novelty is the creation of a new discount on the electricity bill of 40% for “low-income working households” that will reach 1.5 million households.
In addition, the Government will reinforce the electric social bonus for increase discount that currently applies. Specifically, the 60% discount that vulnerable consumers benefit from rises to 65% and that of severely vulnerable consumers goes from 70% to 80%. In addition, it raises 15% the amount of energy entitled to discount. To get an idea of the effects of these measures, as Sánchez has indicated, consumers who currently benefit from the social bonus they paid in August the same as before the crisis of gas prices.
The electricity social bond currently affects 1.3 million Spanish households and they are the power companies, depending on their market share, those in charge of discounting it. In order to benefit from this aid, consumers must have a regulated contractknown as the Voluntary Price for Small Consumers (PVPC), which is contracted through the reference marketers (Endesa Energía XXI, Curenergía, Gas & Power, Baser, Régsiti, Energy Reference Marketer, Teramelcor and Energía Ceuta XXI) .
On the other hand, it also expands the thermal social bonus, as was already advanced in the presentation of the 2023 Budgets, by raising the aid by 102 million euros, up to a total of 259 million euros. The thermal social bonus is a kind of ‘cheque’, which, unlike the electric one, is not paid by the companies but by the State through the Budgets, and from which consumers with the electric social bonus automatically benefit. Thus, the average aid will be doubled to 375 euros by household and will raise the minimum aid to 40 euros.
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Sánchez has also advanced the creation of a new regulated rate (TUR) for neighborhood communities with centralized natural gas boilers that will limit up to end of 2023 the quarterly price increaseas now happens with the existing regulated tariffs. The measure allows 1.7 million households that your bill is reduce by more than half than you would pay under current market conditions.
The neighboring communities must hire a free market rate for ‘large consumers’ because of its size and energy demand –more than 50,000 kilowatts per year– they cannot qualify for regulated tariff (TUR) aimed at domestic consumers. Until now, both tariffs had similar prices. But the energy crisis has triggered the price of gas on the international market and the Government decided in september last year contain the growth of the regulated tariff (TUR) by limiting the rise in the price of the raw material, which is updated every quarter, to 15%, aggravating the differences in the cost of both.