Repsol asks for the electricity reform to be charged to the Budget.

San Sebastián 21 JUN 2022 - 14:16CEST

The president of Repsol, Antonio Brufau, has demanded this Tuesday that the Law of Sustainability of the Electricity System be made from the General State Budget so that citizens do not have to pay more taxes for the consumption of gas and fuels. "That they do not pay for the mistakes of the electricity sector in the past", they are "surcharges for past costs", he insisted.

Brufau also echoed the requests from industry, which is against a tax model that is "a torpedo in the waterline" for the survival of companies in the manufacturing sector. The president of Repsol has intervened in a conference in San Sebastian organized by Elkargi, the largest mutual guarantee society in Spain. In his conference he called for a single European market for energy, something that has not been achieved in the last thirty years despite various debates, in his opinion.

In fact, Germany is returning to coal-fired generation because of the cutback in Russian gas supplies due to the invasion of Ukraine, France is intensifying its nuclear capacity and the Netherlands is reducing its relationship with gas, he explained. He also defended the need to decarbonize the economy, but at the current rate of emissions this will not be achieved for another 15 to 20 years, and this with a rise in temperatures of between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius, in his opinion.

Brufau shied away from accelerated strategies because "there is time to apply more efficient cost routes" that also allow CO2 emissions to be reduced. The energy transition needs "time" and the assumption of "many costs", with information transparency for citizens, so that they are aware of the bill they have to pay for this change, he said. Before the war in Ukraine, Brufau said, oil had already risen 32%, gas 199% and coal 122% more.

He also warned that world generation is 80% based on fossil fuels, so it is not a change that can be made "from today to tomorrow". Because "we have to replace them, and not only with electrification". He was against the banning of the production of internal combustion engines after 2035, "what are we going for," he said, because most of the European automotive industry is focused on this component.

He therefore called for "ambitious but realistic decarbonization" because "total electrification is not the solution".