Teresa Ribera has been denouncing for almost a year and a half, wherever people want to listen to her, that the marginalist market for setting prices for European electricity is broken and does not work, and for more than a year and a half the electricity companies have been denying it. Until yesterday.
"It is absolutely clear and we have realized that, in a context of unpredictable volatility such as the current one, the marginal pricing market does not work correctly," Endesa CEO José Bogas assured. He said it during the conference with analysts to present the results of the power company for the first nine months of the year.
The top executive of Endesa recognized that he is "open to thinking about a new system for the future" when the presence of renewable energies is the majority in the market and a way of remunerating the initial investment cost rather than the cost of to produce at all times. In the current marginal market, the price of electricity is marked by the latest technology that enters the auction, therefore the most expensive. Renewables enter at a zero price, so if all demand is covered with renewables, the price of electricity would be zero with the current marginal market.
While this discussion is settled in Europe, Endesa maintains the forecasts of closing the year with an ordinary net profit of 1,800 million euros and an operating profit before taxes of 4,100 million. They are forecasts that apply the principle of prudence and incorporate, as Bogas explained yesterday, an extraordinary item of 400 million euros as a possible impact of the tax on extraordinary profits that is being processed in Congress. In its current wording, it means taxing 1.2% on the sales of large energy companies.
The evolution of the business during the first nine months of the year allows Endesa to reinforce this objective. Revenues in that period shot up to 22,620 million euros, which represents a growth of 72.6% compared to the previous year. The high operating costs of the business attenuated the increase in profit, despite which it grew by 13.2%, to 1,651 million. This figure includes the extraordinary effect of the partial sale of the electric mobility business. Without this effect, net ordinary profit for the period would be 1,469 million, 0.7% more than the previous year. In customer acquisition, electricity customers increased by 1.2 million, up to 6.8 million, and gas customers increased by 6%, up to 1.8 million. Of these, 1.5 million have a contract in the free market.
