The new unregulated component of power bills will track the power pool average starting in April. According to the Ministry of Industry, the changes aim to do away with speculation and lower costs by 3%. Still, Industry and Minister José Manuel Soria have missed a golden opportunity to draft a game plan that deregulates the energy sector according to EU demands.
Countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom, Austria, Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Ireland do not regulate their tariffs, and their citizens pay less for electricity than Spaniards. Further, these countries are not running a tariff deficit either. In Spain, the system of subsidies that all energy forms leverage creates overall higher energy costs and less transparency. Tariffs are paid for more than just renewable energy. They also pay for a coal industry that extracts coal in a way that is more expensive than if Spain were to buy higher quality coal from another country. Nuclear and hydroelectric plants show dubious profits year after year. Overall, the new system does not guarantee that we can pay down the tariff deficit or that consumers will know whether their power bills will go up or down.
We should remember that under current circumstances it is difficult to totally deregulate the energy sector. Doing so would put too much pressure on the national budget committee and the tariff subsidy system, because revoking the sector's privileges would cause a wave of lawsuits against the state. That does not mean that tariffs need to stick around forever, but that they remain a temporary fix for the energy sector and the Spanish economy. The government should start to figure out how to delegate running the energy sector to an independent party that does not react to political pressures.
