A group of 25 marketers asks the Government for extraordinary measures to alleviate the price of electricity

A group of 25 independent marketers, grouped in the Association of Electricity Marketers, have launched a battery of proposals to the Government to deal with the electrical chaos that is causing the sharp rise in natural gas prices due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The companies propose to modify the current pricing system, removing combined cycles from the marginal system, by developing an alternative model that would only pass on their production cost on the energy sold, or by establishing a ceiling price for these plants, whose additional cost overruns would be recognized and paid with a charge to the electrical system or to the General Budgets.

Likewise, the marketers propose to stop the supervening benefits of all those producers that do not use natural gas to generate electricity, especially of that generation that is not contestable and integrated in the market through intra-group bilateral contracts, with the revision of the exceptions to the application of the Royal Decree-Law 17/2021, and the distribution of the amount obtained through the settlements made by the Market and System Operators, according to the real demand of the consumer and marketers.

Acenel urges the Official Credit Institute (ICO) to set up a specific sectoral liquidity line that can alleviate the long-term situation that they are experiencing with a direct effect on energy costs.

We request that, in relation to the term market mechanisms established in Article 3 of Royal Decree-Law 17/2021, of September 14, these are urgently articulated through bilateral contracts with physical delivery and reduced guarantees are established. , given its link to forward-type contracts, that the quota to which the reference marketers may participate be limited and that, in order to avoid speculation and its non-repercussion on the price for consumers, the participation of the marketers be capped by adding a extra proportional to their consumption in the last year, with a minimum (to encourage capture and effective price competition between agents).

The impossibility of being able to use certain guarantees, such as financial guarantees, in the electric power futures markets, as well as the increasingly harsh demands established by the clearing members in the Clearing Houses, supposes a serious added problem for the marketers who want to guarantee prices in the medium-long term to its consumers.