With the electricity prices fired (this Tuesday the second highest price in history was reached in the wholesale market at 274.56 euros per megawatt-hour), the big electrics They have devised a alternative formula for their big clients, exposed to the volatility of these prices that will remain in record levels in the first quarter of 2022: long-term contracts linked to a renewable park from 2024 with a “Reasonable price & rdquor; in 2022 and 2023.
“The big four, EDP, Iberdrola, Naturgy and Endesa They are raising it, something else is the specific offers & rdquor ;, he says Francisco Espinosa, partner-director of the Electricity Consumers Association (ACE), which groups together companies from the services sector and non-electrointensive industry, for whom energy accounts for around 5% of total costs. This association represents thousands of companies that consume about 20 terabatt-hours of energy per year, a figure similar to that used by the 74 electrointensive plants integrated in the Association of Companies with Large Energy Consumption (AEGE), for whom energy can account for 50% of the costs.
Both industries have the same problem: the low amount of energy covered for the next year. In the case of ACE only 20%, while in AEGE that rate is reduced to 9.5%, as revealed by the representatives of both employers this Tuesday during the III Aeléc Congress. That is, if not remedied, these consumers will be very exposed to the vagaries of the market in 2022, when futures point to prices staying at current levels at least until spring.
The Government’s formula to solve the problem was to take the energy of the oldest renewables (RECORE generation) from the so-called ‘pool’ (wholesale market) to bring them to contracts at a reasonable price with the PVPC industry and consumers, but the criticisms of some companies put this initiative on ‘stand by’.
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If this option does not work out, “the alternative is long-term products “, According to the general director of Institutional Relations and Regulation of Endesa, José Casas Marín. “The OTC markets (secondary markets) set a high price still in 2022 and lower in 2023 and beyond. You have to prepare products with a reasonable price of around 55 or 60 euros that can be closed for a period of three or four years, “he added. “More than one would not be disgusted if the price of energy fit them”, answered the general director of AEGE, Fernando Soto.
The representative of the electrointensive employer justified the low number of long-term contracts in which the electricity companies changed their price from one day to the next. “There was little seriousness due to price volatility and you have to be serious if you sign a 10-year contract. ” “Closing long-term contracts at a time when futures mark 150 and ‘spot’ 270 I think is not the best time, another thing is that there is no other option,” he adds Francisco Espinosa.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com