Households covered by the gas TUR, the regulated rate, are saving this quarter between 37.1% and 56.3% compared to homes that have free market rates, according to the Commission's offer comparator National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC).
Specifically, according to this comparator, the TUR is around 525 euros per year for a home with gas heating and cooking (consumption of about 9,000 kilowatt hours), while free market rates range between 835 and 1,200 euros per year.
This important difference is explained because to mitigate the effects of the gas increase, the Government established a limit on the increase in the TUR through Royal Decree-Law 17/2021 so that the cost of the raw material used in its calculation it could not rise more than 15% in each quarter.
Additionally, 3,000 million euros were allocated from the General State Budgets to compensate marketers of last resort (CUR) for not being able to pass on the increase in gas bills to consumers.
The difference in the price of the gas TUR did not go unnoticed by consumers last winter: contracting requests in September and October 2022 skyrocketed and the telephone and commercial office contracting channels of last resort marketers collapsed, which They had not anticipated this flood of requests.
The CNMC opened a surveillance file on these services and verified month after month that the companies were reinforcing the telephone service and digital contracting channels until they recovered normality of services as of November and December 2022.
Currently, the number of gas consumers who have chosen the TUR is already close to 3 million, which represents an increase of close to 1.5 million in the last year. In the free market, there are almost five million consumers.
