Record-high electricity bills draw criticism to Spain's govt

Spanish consumers are fretting over record-high power prices just as high summer temperatures are keeping air conditioning and cooling systems operating at full capacity

MADRID -- Spanish consumers are fretting over record-high power prices just as high summer temperatures are keeping air conditioning and cooling systems operating at full capacity. The government says that the latest hikes in electricity bills are driven by spiraling prices of so-called carbon certificates, which give companies the right to release carbon dioxide, gas imports that Spain needs to complete its energy mix, and the surging power demand of the summer months. In the latest effort to rein in prices, lawmakers were voting Wednesday on whether to uphold the government’s move last month to cut the value-added tax on most households’ electricity bills from 21% to 10% until the end of this year and to scrap a 7% tax on power generation for at least three months. Utility companies pass on the cost of that tax to their customers. But consumers’ associations said that the savings by those two measures have already been offset by the surge in prices that both Spain and Portugal, which share the electricity purchasing market, have seen since the beginning of this year.