The Government, through the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism, allocates 9,617,962 euros to 25 industrial facilities in Castilla-La Mancha for the compensation of the additional costs arising from the exceptional increase in natural gas prices during the year 2022.
The Ministry has published the proposal for a provisional resolution of this aid, by which the beneficiary autonomous communities will receive 450 million euros for 447 industrial facilities. This aid falls within the European Commission’s Temporary Crisis and Transition Framework.
For the Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism, Héctor Gómez, “this aid responds to the Government’s explicit commitment to gas-intensive companies, so that sectors so important to the national economy can continue their productive activity.” In short, “they are a fundamental part of the measures promoted by the Ministry to improve the competitiveness of the energy-intensive industry and strengthen Spain’s position in the new industrial revolution,” the minister stressed.
The aid mechanism was established by Royal Decree-Law 20/2022, of 27 December, which ordered the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism to set up an aid line in order to compensate for the additional costs due to the exceptional increase in natural gas prices during 2022 for industrial consumers or sectors intensive in natural gas consumption (gas-intensive).
This mandate was fulfilled by Order ICT/744/2023, of 7 July, which regulates the bases of the aid line, after approval by the European Commission.
Through the provisional proposal now published, 448 facilities throughout industrial Spain will benefit from this program. In addition, 100% of the planned budget of 450 million euros has been exhausted, which in turn will cover more than 72% of the maximum possible aid to be allocated to applicant companies based on European regulations.
This aid has been granted to legal entities governed by private law, regardless of their legal form, excluding those belonging to the public sector, which have one or more industrial installations and which meet the following requirements:
a) Be validly constituted at the time of submitting the application.
b) To carry out in each of the facilities for which the grant is requested one or more activities corresponding to the codes of the National Classification of Economic Activities (CNAE) included in the annex of Royal Decree-Law 20/2022, of 27 December.
c) Have consumed more than 1.5 GWh per year of natural gas for at least one of the two years prior to the call.
d) Certify that the ratio between the annual consumption of natural gas and the gross annual added value of each of the facilities operated by the beneficiary for which the aid is requested has been equal to or greater than 1.5 kWh/€ for at least one of the two years prior to the call.
The provisional resolution can be consulted in the following link:
Other aid to the electro-intensive industry
On October 10, the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism published the proposal for an interim resolution of the Mechanism for Compensation of Charges Attributable to the Financing of the Specific Remuneration for Renewables and High Efficiency Cogeneration and for the Additional Financing in Non-Peninsular Territories. The resolution includes an aid of 31 million euros for these electrointensive companies.
Imminent call for the PERTE of Decarbonization
Minister Héctor Gómez also values that this aid coincides with the “imminent call for the first line of aid of the PERTE of Decarbonization, which will be endowed with 1 billion euros, of the more than 3,100 that are expected of public investment”. This PERTE will serve to finance the necessary investments to advance the energy efficiency of this sector, which “the Government will accompany in the urgent process of ecological transformation without this representing a disruption”.
With PERTE, a public investment of 3.1 billion euros is expected that will mobilize up to 11.8 billion euros of total investment; an increase in the competitiveness of the sector by about 10%; the creation of about 8,000 jobs; and a reduction in emissions that could reach 13 million tons of CO2 per year.