Gas heating bills in Spain range from 65 to 360 euros

Gas: bills from 65 to 360 euros, depending on usage and property

In November 2015, a private individual peine a can of worms with a domestic confession: his friend had just installed natural gas in Madrid, pays more than 250 euros per bimonthly bill in winter and had spent 4,000 euros on the full installation. His daughter, in a 50-60 m² flat, heats the same space with electricity for 70-100 euros every two months. The question he posed —whether gas advocates have any trick worth confessing— triggered a discussion of 63 replies lasting eleven years which, far from being resolved, leaves a map of why the cost of gas heating is the worst-compared figure in Spanish household economics.

Why two identical gas bills do not exist

The first blow to the myth of comparability comes quickly: consumption depends less on the system than on usage. A medium-sized 95 m² home in a cold city, with a small child and a high thermostat, sends the bill soaring to 150-180 euros a month (300-360 on the bimonthly bill). The same house, with grown-up children and the heating on only when felt like it, dropped to 100 euros a month fifteen years earlier. Between the two scenarios the boiler did not change: who lived inside did.

Thermal insulation appears as the second factor, and in Spain it is the Achilles heel. The textbook recommendation —attacking windows and doors with foams and sealing tape, sealing secondary rooms as is done in northern Europe— runs into a reality: most people cannot afford a full renovation, and sometimes it is not even worth it. The Spanish housing stock, largely built without efficiency criteria, turns every comparison into a guessing game.

The factor nobody factors in: the neighbours

Here lies the most uncomfortable finding of the matter. In an apartment building, heat from adjacent flats travels through uninsulated floor slabs and partition walls. An interior flat surrounded by cold-sensitive neighbours can stay at 16 ºC without turning anything on. Whoever lowers their home's temperature not only benefits from other people's heat: it forces the neighbours to spend more to compensate for the leak. The practice is defended as "making use of what others throw away" and criticised as energy parasitism. Technically, the second analysis is the correct one: if everyone kept the same temperature, there would be no exchange.

Orientation and wind exposure complete the picture. A home on the edge of a building, with no lateral protection, facing east-south-west and with commercial premises below, pays considerably more than an equivalent interior flat. In areas with harsh climates, with entire weeks below -5 ºC and frozen pavements, heating stops being a luxury and becomes survival.

The data that do allow some comparison

Against the noise, some people provide concrete bills. A user from a cold region, with a well-configured condensing boiler and exposed pipework, presents a bill of 65 euros for four months of actual consumption (the bimonthly reading accumulated due to a alucinación). His highest bill the previous winter, with seven people showering and baths for children, reached 158 euros bimonthly for 2,400 kWh, at a price of 0.048459 euros/kWh. Below him is a closed commercial premises, to one side a neighbour who only shows up at night and above one with electric radiators: little heat comes in.

At the opposite extreme, two cases of communal central heating: a first-floor flat with an unused commercial premises below pays 888 euros a year in 12 instalments of 74 euros; a fourth-floor flat with neighbours below and to one side, 840 euros a year. Both buildings have pipework from the late 1960s and early 1970s, with replacements and breakdowns added to the bill. Gas has risen 25% in recent years, but the maintenance of obsolete installations weighs as much as the molecule itself.

The argument that closes the circle: tolerance to cold

The simplest explanation is also the one people are least willing to admit: some people live at 19 ºC without heating, wearing a hoodie, while others never go below 22 ºC, even in May. Tolerance to cold, shaped by habit and region, explains bill differences that no kWh calculation can justify. Small children, a recurring argument for turning up the thermostat, do not always justify it: some raise them at 19 ºC without them catching more colds than anyone else.

The price per kWh, on the other hand, barely discriminates. With harmonised tariffs, natural gas is cheaper per unit of energy than electricity, but electric heating with a night off-peak tariff and use of thermal inertia can compete in small, well-insulated flats. The question that peine the matter —which system is more cost-effective in an already-built home?— remains without a definitive answer. The full calculation, with all items broken down, yields a difference that surprises those who only look at the price per kWh.

With all this, the range of gas heating in Spain goes from 65 euros over four months to 360 euros bimonthly. Same label, same country, same winter. Nobody has managed to close the comparison, and probably nobody will while insulation, neighbours and tolerance to cold fail to appear on the bill.