75% of cogeneration power has benefited from the ‘cap mechanism’
MADRID, 4 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The president of the Spanish Association of Cogeneration (Acogen), Rubén Hernando, has urged the Government to “finalize and promote the remuneration for the operation and the evolution of the remuneration system of 2023”.
In his speech at the 18th Annual Cogeneration Congress, Hernando stressed that the publication of pending remuneration “is essential so that cogeneration plants that are not sufficiently covered by the capping mechanism can assess and recover their operating costs as soon as possible and reactivate its production levels, further reducing the country’s natural gas consumption and boosting the industrial economy and associated employment”.
For his part, the president of Cogen Spain, Julio Artiñano, considered that the sector needs “clear signals that are adapted to the reality of the intervened market and with timely review, for example monthly, not only for the pending months but for 2023 , where the new regulation must stabilize the sector and allow all facilities to operate, including those for pig waste and olive groves”.
Likewise, he called for the approval of the auction framework, the draft of which was published on December 28, so that operators in the sector “can provide the necessary resources to attend these, thereby complementing the regulatory signal that allows decarbonizing current facilities with efficiency criteria to support the industry in our country”.
Specifically, the cogeneration sector demands that the Government promulgate this month the pending remuneration, especially those for the current semester, with the empowerment already announced by the President of the Government on September 6; as well as the publication of the new methodology for updating the remuneration of the operation for 2023 and subsequent years.
In addition, it asks to establish, before the end of the year, the order of bases for the auctions of 1,200 megawatts (MW) of cogeneration to be convened in 2023.
On the other hand, 75% of the cogeneration power has benefited from the ‘cap mechanism’, although it only represents half of the existing plants. Thus, a third of the cogeneration plants that were stopped have started using the mechanism, according to data from the sector associations.
Meanwhile, the smaller plants, the island ones and those of the olive grove and slurry, which represent a third of the total, are still unable to resume production, since this measure is clearly insufficient for them.
Last weekend – the first to apply the ‘capping mechanism’ – production picked up, reaching 42% of the activity level of the previous year.
