Faced with the lack of solutions to energy poverty, social tariff.
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The update of the indicators on the National Strategy to Fight Energy Poverty shows that this phenomenon increases from 2020 in thousands of families.
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Given the inability represented by measures such as the social bonus, Ecologistas en Acción demands real structural measures such as the social tariff and the reform of the electricity market.
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The environmental organization presents two reports to show the importance of starting the public debate on a social rate for electrical and thermal supplies.
In the European Week to Fight Energy Poverty, Ecologists in Action once again demands access to minimum supplies of light and heating as a vital right to develop a dignified life. The current approach to these supplies as a market good leaves thousands of families across the country by the wayside. A circumstance that increasingly affects more people. Proof of this is the recent update of energy poverty indicators, which show that more than 4.5 million people in 2020 have been unable to pay their electricity bill on time and that almost 5.2 million are unable to have the house at an adequate temperature.
These figures show the current social emergency and the enormous distance to meet the objectives sought by 2025. The current social bonus or the measures adopted in response to the COVID-19 emergency situation are only mere patches incapable of providing a response to thousands of people. . The concept of a social bonus is a welfare and stigmatizing measure; it is applied according to minimum income levels and on a bill whose concepts and costs are opaque and in the hands of the energy companies.
Electricity supply has become a highly profitable business. Before liberalization, the stable legal framework considered it a public service. Currently, the financial framework that makes up the energy pricing system is based on the principles of neoliberal capitalism, whose objective is to exponentially increase the accounting results of large companies. Meanwhile, it maintains a concentration, mainly in three companies, Endesa, Iberdrola and Naturgy. Situations such as the 500 days that Cañada Real has been without electricity supply show the enormous dependence of families on oligopoly companies.
Lack of access, the inability to meet some requirements or poor practices in the energy sector are enormous obstacles for families to access basic supplies. For this reason, Ecologists in Action insists on the need to overcome a concept such as the social bonus and address the debate on the social rate from the perspective of respect for Human Rights. A rate that should guarantee the protection of the most vulnerable people by creating a specific rate framework that allows it to be processed automatically without families having to do any processing, since it simply “applies to them.”
To this end, Ecologistas en Acción published last December the report 'A social tariff as a response to energy poverty', which specifically addresses a proposal with the minimum conditions that a social electricity tariff should consider. In this week of protest against this situation, the environmental organization insists on the need to expand and debate this proposal so that a legal framework is put in place that is effective in the fight against energy poverty.
Within this context, it makes public a new proposal: 'A social tariff as a response to energy poverty. Part II: The thermal social rate', in this case for non-electrical supplies, where a reflection on a thermal social rate is provided. It would be a transformation tool focused on the most vulnerable population to guarantee their right to access thermal energy and live in decent air conditioning conditions. A proposal that is aimed especially at those people who may be more anchored to obsolete technologies based on fossil fuels and who end up paying a double bill: energy and climate.