Nearly eight out of ten potential beneficiaries of the social electricity bonus do not benefit from these reductions on their electricity bill, according to a study by EsadeEcPol published this Thursday which measures “for the first time” the coverage rates of the social bonus. The report highlights that “a large proportion of those who benefit from the social bonus are not vulnerable families: among large family households with average-high incomes, more than 60% benefit from the bonus”.
The survey warns of “design problems that limit the desired scope of the policy,” which are explained by the fact that the reductions must be requested by the user. The authors, Natalia Collado Van-Baumberghen and Ángel Martínez Jorge, estimate that the coverage rate of the bonds in 2022 (the last year analyzed and the year in which the energy crisis due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine began) was 24.5%, which is a slight increase from 23.2% in 2021 and 22.6% in 2020.
But this rate is “particularly high” for large families (45.5%), the only population to benefit from it regardless of their income. In this case, more than 60% of households with upper middle incomes are affected. However, 60% of large families with modest incomes are excluded and do not benefit from the bonus.
The coverage rate of the social bonus is barely 20% for low-income households. “And only 9.2% for retirees receiving a minimum pension,” warns the study, which is based on a multifactorial statistical analysis of the Survey on Living Conditions of the National Institute of Statistics (INE).
His conclusion is that, although two out of three beneficiaries are low-income households, a third of the total are not.
To alleviate this situation, the report recommends “reducing barriers to entry as much as possible” so that the bonus benefits those who really need it. Such as? by transferring “responsibility to Administrations, which could coordinate with marketing companies to identify households likely to receive the bonus based on data from the Treasury (for income), Social Security (for minimum pension conditions) and other organizations that have the necessary information.”
A “clear example” of this would be the minimum living income (IMV), since “on paper, receiving the IMV automatically makes the household a potential beneficiary of the bonus”. “The ideal would be for the administration to take advantage of this information to accelerate the Bond concessions, by further aligning and harmonizing the two concessions.” The “automation” of these discounts was already proposed in 2019 by the Government’s strategy against energy poverty, which covers the period 2019-2024. The measure has never been implemented, even though the government has been waiting for years for a reform of these reductions.
The study recalls that, in a context marked by rising energy prices, in 2023, 20% of households were unable to maintain an adequate temperature in their homes, the highest figure in the EU along with Portugal, and one in ten in that country. there were delays in paying bills. The number of households that consume less energy than necessary due to a lack of financial resources to cover this expense doubled between 2020 and 2022.
This Wednesday, a Commission report warned, with data from 2023, that Spain is doubling the EU’s energy poverty: 20.8% of households cannot maintain their customers in winter, the same figure as in Portugal and ahead of Bulgaria (20.7%) or Lithuania (20%). The European average is 10.6% and in Luxembourg only 2.1% of the population has this problem.
To improve the design of the social bonus, the authors of the study advise “reconsidering the definition of the criteria, introducing a maximum income for large families.” This proposal was abandoned in the past by the third vice-president, Teresa Ribera, but it has not been implemented. The last time it was done was in 2023, when the case of the former vice-president of Madrid and now president of the Madrid Assembly, Enrique Ossorio, came to light.
The report commits to “consider in the long term the use of more effective and unified tax policies (such as negative income taxes) that allow to tackle situations of poverty in a comprehensive manner, with reliable information and less administrative procedures”.
They warn that “today, access to instruments and equipment to improve the energy efficiency of homes, as well as to the information needed to manage the installation, is not equitable in Spain”. To respond to the challenge of energy poverty and decarbonisation objectives, they demand more active strategies from administrations to “go after” vulnerable households that could benefit from efficiency improvements, in terms of rehabilitation, insulation or the installation of renewable energies. And they ask to concentrate the available resources so that they benefit households with the lowest incomes, “which are precisely those that will most likely condition the possible investment in efficiency to obtaining the aid, because without it, they will not be able to undertake it”.
The authors warn that “the coverage gap between single-parent and two-parent households has widened in recent years”: if in 2020 there was a difference of 3.5 points, in 2022 there were already 12 (20% – 32%).
On the other hand, in 2022, the coverage of households in which all members were born in Spain was double that of households in which one person was born abroad (27% versus 13%). For rental households, the gap remained between 8 and 10 points during these three years (19% coverage in 2022 versus 27% for owner households).
