The Spanish market and competition regulator CNMC (Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia) has criticised the November 2017 governmental decree that introduced new criteria to deny the closure of power plants and an auction mechanism to transfer the plant to third parties in case the facility owner does not want to continue with the operation of the plant.
Operators of thermal power plants already have to request an authorisation to stop operations, which is conditioned on not endangering the security of electricity supply in Spain. According to the CNMC, additional criteria introduced by the government - effects on competition, prices and supply of raw materials - are unnecessary, since the Spanish system could easily absorb the closure of 3 GW of coal-fired capacity by 2020 without affecting the security of supplies. In addition, these new provisions are not included in Law 24/2013 of the electricity sector and could go against the European regulations contained in the Proposal of the European Commission of Regulation related to the internal market proposed in the Winter Package.