Households and SMEs will enjoy from January 1, 2023 an additional reduction of 9.21% in their electricity reduction, according to information published this Tuesday by the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge within the framework of the royal decree law that regulates the charges of the electrical system for the next year.
In the document, currently in the process of public consultation, the ministry headed by Teresa Ribera proposes adding an additional reduction to the charges that customers pay on their electricity bills to offset the cost derived from the energy policy.
In other words, the amount with which concepts such as premiums for renewable energies, half of the extra costs of extra-peninsular electricity systems and the deficit of the electricity system are covered. This is an amount that the Government sets each year and that currently already has a reduction of 56% compared to what was paid in 2021. That already reduced amount is to which another additional reduction of 9.21% will be added. to alleviate the final cost paid by households and small and medium-sized companies.
For the rest of the different types of electrical consumers, decreases are also proposed depending on the contracted power, which range between 5.37% and 17.06%.
The charges are just one of the fixed costs that the customer bill reflects together with the tolls and that have nothing to do with the electricity consumption that each one makes. Therefore, a saving effort does not translate into a drop in the final amount of the invoice in those terms. The document establishes a public consultation period until December 16 and will enter into force when it is published in the Official State Gazette.
The ministerial order presented contemplates, in turn, the possibility that in the event that the amount collected through the charges on the invoice is not sufficient to cover the costs, an alternative way of compensating for this expense must be enabled in order to to avoid a deficit in this concept. That compensation, in principle, could come out of the general state budget if necessary.
The published royal decree contemplates the income derived from the 7% tax on the production value of electrical energy (IVPEE), for the year 2023. This is a tax that is suspended from until December 31, 2022 and despite Everyone assumes that the suspension will continue, the suspension has not officially been extended. Within this regulatory framework, the royal decree warns: "If the previous tax suspension were to be extended beyond December 31, 2022, an equivalent compensation must be provided to the electrical system for the loss of income that said suspension would cause, as already reflected in the successive suspensions of the referred tax in the past, an additional endowment".
