EU solutions for lower energy bills. Nicușor Dan announces investments of 30 billion euros in networks
Nicușor Dan declared, on the night of Thursday to Friday, March 19-20, that at the meeting of the European Council in Brussels, the leaders discussed the price of energy and solutions to reduce costs.
Nicusor Dan/PHOTO: AFP
The president announced that the EU is allocating a huge amount of money for infrastructure, which will be reflected in the lowering of the “energy circulation cost”, a component of the bill. The head of state explains that the EU is open to gas price capping mechanisms and redirecting producers' exceptional profits to consumer protection. This cost-cutting strategy is complemented by the proposal to make carbon emission certificates cheaper, a measure that would remove some of the financial burden currently applied to the final price of electricity.
“In this interval from the last Council until today, the European Commission came up with a proposal and an amount of money, 30 billion euros, to be invested on the surface of Europe in networks, in the optimization of networks and in interconnections between countries, so that we get closer and closer to a European energy market.
And also, as you know, there was a nuclear energy conference in Paris two or three weeks ago. Unlike the discussions that took place a few years ago, the Commission, the Council, reached an agreement to go towards the stimulation of nuclear energy and including countries that wanted to give up their nuclear power plants come back and request the extension of their operation”he pointed out.
“The commission was open to mechanisms that reduce the price of energy”
Regarding the mechanism for setting the energy price, the head of state said that discussions will continue at the next meeting of the Council.
“Regarding the price mechanism – as you know, the mechanism by which the price is determined electricity is that all producers receive the price of the most expensive source of production that is available at a certain time interval, and that makes those who produce cheaper have substantial gains at certain time intervals.
This means that even in countries that have a significant percentage of cheap and renewable energy, due to the fact that the last bit of energy is at a high price, consumers and companies in those countries have a high price. And on this matter there was a discussion, which will continue at the next Council.
The commission was open to mechanisms that reduce the price of energy, either by capping the price of gas, because most examples, most time intervals, are those in which the gas plant is the one that gives the maximum price and therefore the price for the whole day and for the entire geographical area, whether these price differences, which are large, won by those who produce cheap energy, be temporarily taken by the state and taken to consumer protection. A debate which, as I said, will continue”, Nicusor Dan explained.
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He also referred to the discussions regarding carbon emission certificates, the so-called ETS.
“On the one hand, the availability for the industrial areas that are exempted from the need to buy emission certificates to be widened, this scope to be widened, again, an availability from the Commission in the process of revising this ETS mechanism, either as we proposed in the letter that we made public today to ten countries, the initiator being Austria, or for the Commission to issue a number of certificates and thus the price of the certificate to decrease and thus the component of carbon emissions of the energy price to decrease, whether the targets, the periods, the moment in time at which we assume some carbon emission targets are extended, and, in this way, again, the value of the certificate decreases.
So, this whole discussion on the energy price mechanism will be resumed at the next Council in June”the president detailed.
Regarding the proposal of the ten countries regarding the green transition, he stated that it is the first time that this discussion is taking place.
“I think that for at least three Councils there has been this contradictory discussion and it is important to emphasize, because there is the perception in a certain category of the population that we come here and receive some orders and go home and say: “this is what Europe told us to do”.
Not! It's a democracy, it's a debate where countries have different visions and try to convince each other and try to reach a consensus by leaving each of their requests on a certain issue“, said Nicusor Dan.
He recalled that, before the Rio Climate Summit, in which, in negotiations, the postponement of ETS2 by one year was obtained, this discussion existed.
“In the meantime, the countries have somehow left each of them and the letter you saw is, how to say, a more quantitative and negotiable version of a much more vehement position that many of us had: “we should give up the ETS”, that was the starting point.
And from the other side, I saw the same rapprochement, because the deadline would be the summer of this year, in the process of redefining the ETS mechanism to take into account all the particular situations, and the work that the representatives of the countries did here for the conclusions of this summit was to bring both positions closer together, to put both positions in a negotiated form”. he further explained.
Asked if short-term measures to reduce the price of fossil fuels were discussed and to what extent the Commission can accept certain measures from the Member States.
“Yes, yes. Beyond the release of some stocks from the short-term reserve stocks, which is a measure that important countries take and which influences the price on the energy market, there are no measures at the European level, but there are measures that each of the countries can take, so that's what it was about, without making a decision in this sense.”
