On June 5, World Environment Day, the Ministry of Industry introduced the new energy reform through the Royal Decree, a measure that makes effective the “sun tax” that benefits large companies in the electricity oligopoly.
Individuals will have to pay a tax for self-generated energy, that is, the energy obtained by individuals through alternative systems, such as the installation of solar panels. The project devised by the Popular Party aims to regulate self-consumption of energy by compensating the electric companies for the possible loss of income derived from the use of the aforementioned alternative systems.
The Unión Española Fotovoltaica (UNEF) has been dissatisfied and against this tax. According to Jorge Barredo, president of said entity, what the Government intends in this way is to penalize responsible consumers who save with a self-consumption system with an extra toll. It regrets that none of the assessments made by industry, civil society, regulatory bodies and the bulk of political parties have been incorporated into the project. In addition, he added that said Royal Decree seeks to artificially impose an energy model based on fossil fuels and the maintenance of the consumer at the margin of energy generation.
According to the PP, this tax will be differentiated between a “toll to pay for the electricity networks” (in which the self-consumer will pay only when they are pouring or receiving electricity from the network) and system charges, which will be mandatory in any case and will cover the annuities of the obscurantist rate deficit denounced on multiple occasions by organizations such as FACUA or ASECE. And this is happening in a scenario in which Spanish electricity companies obtain million-dollar profits year after year from abusive prices on Spanish consumers.
UNEF also recalls that the measure, apart from violating the Spanish Constitution and two European directives, will seriously affect the transition to the new energy model based on renewable energy, distributed generation and energy efficiency in our country, and puts it at considerable risk compliance with the objectives for 2020 committed to the EU related to CO2 reduction, power supply with renewable energy sources and energy efficiency.
The most paradoxical aspect of the matter is that the Government has approved regulations that are so socially damaging (designed specifically to put up an economic barrier that discourages citizens from investing in energy saving systems based on renewable energies), on a day like this enviroment. In short, a new blow to the environment precisely on the official day of remembrance of it.