The power company responds to criticism from the employer association AEGE, accusing the firm of a “disproportionate” rate hike
The dialectical struggle between the largest Spanish power company, Iberdrola, and the main national steel company, Sidenor, has risen several degrees in recent hours. To the reproach of the second to the energy sector for not giving “competitive offers” to its clients – in his case he was speaking mainly from a business point of view – the multinational company chaired by Ignacio Galán responded yesterday by accusing the steelmaker of raising its prices for a form that is “disproportionately inexplicable” and that “does not correspond” to the increase in energy costs.
The president of Sidenor and, at the same time, current head of the electrointensive industry association (AEGE), José Antonio Jainaga, has asked the Government for short-term measures “to avoid suffocation” due to high energy costs, especially in the case of electricity. Otherwise, he warned, some companies will not last “even six months.” “The industry will go to the hole if the electricity price system is not reviewed from top to bottom,” he warned in a recent business forum before the CEO of Iberdrola Spain, Ángeles Santamaría.
The answer from the electricity company has been to accuse this steel firm of taking advantage of the situation to get a cut, raising its rates well above what would be reasonable. According to Europa Press, sources of the former do not see “objective reasons for Sidenor to set the prices of the steel it is charging”, since – they add – “it is selling its products with competitive prices of energy supply closed for a long time.”
According to Iberdrola, it is Sidenor’s own clients who are asking it to lower its rates “so that Spain continues to compete globally in wind energy, especially in the installation of offshore wind farms”. And with respect to its complaint that there are no reasonable electricity offers, it denies it and maintains that several energy companies (including itself) have offered “the company chaired by Jainaga” “fixed competitive” prices for some time.
In addition, the multinational electricity company points out that it has reached agreements with other steel companies in the Basque Country to establish fixed electricity rates until 2023. In this sense, it affirms that it proposed a price of 40 euros / MWh for ten years to Sidenor and Sidenor « declined to accept “In any case, it argues that” fixed prices are possible if there are no detractions or auctions in the market that imply a greater risk in business costs.
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