So, let’s get the bad news out of the way first. Once again, electricity prices have been increased. From the beginning of January this year, the state electricity price that applies to about 17 million households in Spain was increased by another 9.8%. This is part of a global trend, and energy prices generally will continue to soar over the coming years. It is why at Oasis, we are big believers in energy efficiency and renewable energy. As prices continue to increase, they are going to really eat into people’s disposable income. For most of us, the increases thus far have been an inconvenience, rather anything more serious. Unfortunately, that is beginning to change. Not only, we do have increased energy prices, but inflation is just beginning to take hold across the globe. Food and commodity prices are rising dramatically, although they haven’t filtered through yet to the retail environment. Soon, we will start to notice substantial differences in prices when we go shopping.
Enough of the bad news! The good news is that the government grants for renewable energy are back up and running again for 2011. There is an annual quota set aside for grants and last year, we did a lot of solar installations, whereby we were able to pass on typical discounts of 40-50% to our clients. However, we had a lot of people coming to us in the latter stages of the year looking into solar and renewable energy installations, only to find out that the grants had run out for the year.
What’s more, we don’t know what the annual quota is, and it wouldn’t surprise us at all if the quota had been reduced, due to the state of public finances. Therefore, if it is something of interest, then it’s worth acting sooner rather than later. We would also just like to remind people once again that the grants can only be acquired through an installation company – like Oasis – that has the full accreditation from the ‘Junta de Andalucia’.