MADRID, 11 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The third vice president of the Government and minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, has warned that the National Fund for the Sustainability of the Electricity System (FNSSE) is a measure that “at some point will have to be recovered.”
In an informative meeting at Nueva Economía Fórum, Ribera showed his conviction that “this fund was well designed”, although he acknowledged that “apparently it does not seem like it is yet time to activate it immediately”, still taking into account the existing uncertainties.
The creation of the so-called ‘green fund’, harshly criticized by the oil and gas sectors, among others, was launched by the Government in 2020 with the aim of articulating a tool with which to transfer from the electrical system to all energy uses the cost of nearly 7,000 million euros annually associated with premiums and incentives for renewables.
However, the fund finally saw its processing postponed in the Congress of Deputies in 2022, after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine and the beginning of an energy crisis due to the increase in the price of natural gas.
“The bad fortune that this signal, which I believe is powerful and interesting, coincided at the beginning of its processing in Parliament with the invasion of Ukraine and with the absolutely insane growth of the price of gas in international markets “Ribera said.
Thus, he stressed that at that time “consumer protection” had to be established as a priority, since if this had not been the case, “an upward effect on gas prices would have been accumulating, which would most likely have been unaffordable by the domestic consumers and industrial consumers.
On the other hand, Ribera defended the application in the midst of the crisis of market intervention measures to “ensure that there were no excessive profits from the companies”, as well as a special tax on energy companies.
In this sense, he also considered that now is the time to extend this tax to energy companies, adapting, of course, its design with the inclusion in the Budgets of incentives for reinvestment in renewables.
“We are at a time when we have to accelerate the transformation of the energy system and the Government must always ensure that these distortions do not occur. But simultaneously it has to facilitate a volume of investment, and that is the way in which we can guide this figure to ensure that it is an incentive for investment and, therefore, can provide stability,” he added.
