The Alliance for the Competitiveness of the Spanish Industry believes that the government’s new anti-crisis measures will help consolidate and strengthen key instruments for industrial competitiveness, prolonging them and turning them into structural elements, especially in the electricity sector, where meaningful gaps persist relative to our major European peers.
A Context Requiring Effective and Sustained Measures
The volatility of energy markets in recent times has underscored the need for a stable framework that allows industry to operate with predictability. The measures adopted by the government in earlier phases have helped cushion part of the impact of rising energy prices, particularly through tax relief and regulatory adjustments.
From the Alliance’s perspective, the new package of measures represents a significant opportunity to build on those initiatives that have proven effective, moving toward a more structural, medium- and long-term approach.
Electricity: A Key Factor in Competitiveness
The organization notes that electricity cost is one of the main factors shaping industrial competitiveness. In Spain, this remains a challenge, especially when compared with other European countries with which it competes directly for industrial investment.
Therefore, the Alliance emphasizes the importance that the new decree include measures that bring industrial electricity costs closer to those of our neighboring countries, thereby strengthening the productive sector’s ability to compete on equal terms.
Priorities for the New Energy Framework
In this context, the Alliance highlights a set of lines of action it considers priorities:
- Provide stability to the existing electricity-cost reduction measures, avoiding their temporary nature. In this sense, the organization advocates for the total elimination of the Tax on the Value of Electricity Production (IVPEE), to reduce the wholesale price of electricity and lower the industrial bill.
- Expansion of the discount of the Special Electricity Tax (IEE), extending the 85% discount to all manufacturing industries, expanding the base of beneficiaries and linking it to commitments to energy efficiency. In this way, Spanish taxation would align with European regulations.
- Integration of the costs of technical restrictions into the access tariffs, in order to prevent these large and volatile costs from being passed directly to the energy price, aligning the Spanish system with that of other European countries.
- Consolidate permanently the 80% reduction in access tariffs for energy-intensive industry, avoiding annual extensions that generate uncertainty. This predictability is key to facilitating investments in electrification and decarbonization of industrial processes.
- Maximize compensation for indirect CO₂ costs, applying the maximum level allowed by European regulations (up to 75%-80%) and funding them in the budget to avoid competitive disadvantages and carbon leakage.
The Alliance estimates that the coordinated application of these five measures would reduce industrial electricity costs by between 10% and 30%, bringing Spain closer to the levels of its main European competitors, which would improve the relative position of Spanish industry and facilitate long-term investment decisions.
Spain has a notable potential in renewable energy generation, which represents an opportunity to reinforce its industrial positioning. However, the Alliance recalls that this potential will only translate into an effective competitive advantage if it is accompanied by a regulatory and economic framework that allows those benefits to be passed on to the entire industry.
