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ENERGY

Spain hails Berlin call for Europe gas link

Spain and Portugal backed Germany's call for a gas pipeline linking the Iberian peninsula with central Europe on Friday, with Madrid saying its part of the connection could be "operational" within months.

gas pipeline
Spain hails Berlin call for Europe gas link. Photo: Ina FASSBENDER / AFP

The proposal came as Europe struggles to find ways to rapidly reduce its energy dependence on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, which has upended the power market, sending prices soaring and nations scrambling for supplies.

On Thursday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said a pipeline running through Portugal, Spain and France to central Europe was “conspicuously absent” and if it existed, it could make “a massive contribution” to easing the supply crisis.

Spain currently has six liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals for processing gas that arrives by sea which could help the EU boost imports, but only has two, low-capacity links to France’s gas network, which has connections to the rest of Europe.

Madrid has been pushing for the revival of the pipeline project linking the Catalan Pyrenees with France, which could significantly increase its supply capacity.

Speaking to Spain’s public television, Ecology Minister Teresa Ribera welcomed the chancellor’s remarks and expressed Madrid’s “willingness to contribute to the energy crisis … using Spain’s regasification infrastructure”.

Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa said such a pipeline link to central Europe was “a priority” for Portugal, welcoming Germany’s stance as upping “the pressure on European institutions” to make progress on this issue.

Although there was a good gas network in the Iberian Peninsula, the problem was transporting it across the Pyrenees, with Spain and its gas network operator Enagas working with the French authorities to develop “a more straightforward interconnection”, the Spanish minister said.

“This pipeline across the Catalan Pyrenees would require an investment,” she said, adding that “Enagas estimates that the pipeline could be operational within eight or nine months on the southern side of the border”. 

The pipeline would be similar to the defunct MidCat project which sought to link Portugal, Spain to France but it drew opposition from environmental groups and work was halted in 2019 when financing fell through.

But the Ukraine war has boosted calls to resume such plans, including from EU chief Ursula von der Leyen.

Speaking to AFP, an Enagas spokeswoman confirmed the timeline “of eight to nine months from the start of construction”.

Under its 2022-2030 strategic plan, the company aims to spend some €370 million on the pipeline project.

Ribera also said Spain was working to make better use of its existing pipelines by installing an additional compressor, which would allow it to increase the volume of gas exported by 20 to 30 percent.

This could take place within “two or three months”, she added.

“Obviously it’s not much – through these interconnections, we can provide up 2.0-2.5 percent of the gas consumed in the European Union as a whole – but it’s relevant.”

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PROPERTY

End of home visits as gas meters go digital in Spain

Soon you may not have to worry about people coming inside your home to read your gas meter in Spain, as 5.7 million analogue versions are being replaced by smart ones. Here's everything you need to know.

End of home visits as gas meters go digital in Spain

The sound of someone ringing your bell and shouting “gas” through the intercom or coming into your apartment building and calling out through the stairwells is commonplace in Spain.

No, they’re not warning people of a gas leak, they have of course come to read your meter, el contador de gas in Spanish. The good news is that this may soon come to an end, and you’ll no longer have to let strangers into your house to look up how much you’ve used, it will simply be sent digitally.

This will mean greater privacy and security, as according to the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC), almost half of domestic natural gas meters are located inside people’s homes.

The replacement is expected to affect a total of 5.7 million devices across the country and the transition will be carried out progressively until 2028.

On April 4th, the Regulatory Supervision Chamber of the CNMC approved a resolution in which it outlined rental prices for future smart natural gas meters for ‘small’ customers.

It defined ‘small’ as those households or businesses connected to networks with a pressure lower than 4 bars and a consumption of less than 50,000 kWh per year.

The CNMC report stated that the cost of changing the analogue equipment for smart counters wouldn’t cost the customer anything, but that they would have to pay €1.10 per month in order to rent it. This will be equivalent to €13.22 per year.

The only time someone may have to come to your home is once every 10 years in order to replace the battery.

The replacement will be linked to the expiration date of the useful life of the devices, which is set at 20 years.

The replacement of gas meters with smart meters has been studied by the CNMC for more than 10 years, during which time the organisation has been preparing various reports on the costs and benefits.

According to El País, its first report dates back to 2011, where it highlighted a conservative strategy by concluding that it was necessary to wait for the implementation of smart gas meters in other countries and see the results.

The CNMC has been insisting for years that the replacement of meters was not profitable for the system, especially for consumers, since current regulations require that the costs be passed on, a factor that caused the transition to be paused for many years.

Finally in 2021, they changed their minds, because according to their analysis, the cost-benefit of the operation became positive, since the analogue meters that were going to end their useful life span also had to be replaced. According to the distributors, 72 percent of the meters had exceeded their useful life in 2020 or were going to exceed it before 2028.

The calculation of savings from remote reading by distributors will be about €2.40 per year.

The same thing happened in Spain with electricity meters, when they switched to digital ones, however the transition process took more than a decade due to the fact there were more than 30 million supply points throughout the country.

In the case of natural gas, it has been the distribution companies that have requested a change in equipment for smart meters.

As natural gas has fixed prices in the free and regulated markets, it does not have the same advantages in terms of the transition, as electricity does, where wholesale market prices fluctuate hourly.

In Europe, 6 out of 10 gas meters are already digital.

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