K. Skrekas: We will recover 6 billion surplus revenues in the next 12 months

The discussion of the bill for the licensing process of Renewable Energy Sources was completed by the Production and Trade Committee of the Parliament. ND was in favor of the bill. SYRIZA and PASOK-KINAL declared a reservation for the plenary session. The KKE, the Hellenic Solution and the MERA25 voted against.

The Minister of Environment and Energy referred to the need to increase the participation of RES in the country’s electricity mix. “For every 1,000 megawatts of new RES that enter the system at current prices, we save 300 to 400 million euros from gas imports, which we will not do and which is used to generate electricity. Therefore, it is not just that the increase in RES it helps the environment, but also gives a permanent solution in terms of energy costs “, said, among other things, the Minister of Environment and Energy and added that it is a debt to the next generations, to lay the foundations today for the production of electricity to be done in a clean way and at an affordable price. “Right now, the cheapest way to generate electricity is to use the abundant sun, but also the wind potential that our country has,” said Mr. Skrekas.

As the opposition had earlier accused the government that the bill it is promoting does not provide an answer to the main issues of the transition to green energy, Mr. Skrekas replied that when SYRIZA was in power, the penetration of RES in the country’s electricity system was only 1 / 5 in rhythm, relative to penetration today.

“Every year during SYRIZA, about 200 to 300 megawatts of new renewable energy sources were constructed and installed”, said the Minister of Environment and Energy and added: “We have reached in 2019 to install 920 – 930 megawatts, in 2020 980, in 2021 we exceeded 1,000 megawatts and in 2022 to reach about 2,000 megawatts, 2 gigawatts of new renewable energy sources, which means that this year, by the end of the year, almost 50% of electricity consumption will come from renewable energy sources and only the remaining 50% will “It will be produced either from natural gas or lignite, or we will import electricity. Our goal from 2030, 2035 onwards is to be clean exporters of green electricity and we will achieve that.”

He also stressed that “the government has returned almost 3.5 billion euros from last September to June, from the super-revenues of the special account of RES, ELAPE, to the citizens”.

In this climate, Mr. Skrekas also mentioned that the bill introduces another important reform. “We are legislating – we have received the approval in record time from the European Commission – and the ministerial decision is imminent, for which we have also received approval from the competent competition committee of the European Commission and the energy directorate, and we are moving forward with a mechanism that recovers Pro-revenue in all base electricity generation technologies, we promote them to the energy transition fund – Greece is the only country that has set up such a fund – we go there all this pro-revenue and return it back to the citizens.

In the next 12 months, with today’s very high electricity prices, we estimate that we will recover about 6 billion euros in revenue from gas plants, lignite plants, hydroelectric plants, but also from renewable energy sources, which are commercial “They sell energy to the system and in this way we will support the electricity bills of households and businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises,” said the Minister of Environment.

The parties

Earlier, ND rapporteur Vassilis Vassiliadis stressed: “The necessity of the regulations arises, mainly, from the unfavorable situation in terms of the energy adequacy of our country, but of course also of Europe” and argued that Greece, but also the entire European South, has the potential to develop competitively, in terms of production and export of electricity from Renewable Energy Sources.

He also pointed out that the green transition and decoupling from imports of fossil fuels from non-European sources is also the direction of REPowerEU. As for the main body of the bill, Mr. Vassiliadis said that provisions are being introduced to reduce bureaucracy, utilize new digital technologies and provide incentives to investors to move forward quickly. At the same time, as he stressed, great emphasis is given to energy storage projects, which are key to the sustainable use of RES.

Mr. Vassiliadis also referred to the temporary Mechanism for the Return of Part of the Revenues of the Next Day Market. “It puts an end to the super profits of the wholesale electricity producers and a ceiling on the compensation price of the power plants. The revenues from these regulations end up in the Energy Transition Fund and therefore in the same consumers,” said the ND MP.

The position that the provisions of the bill “have adverse effects on the natural environment, society and ultimately on the economy and the service of the wider public interest”, expressed the SYRIZA rapporteur Theopistis Perkas.

The bill, as he noted, does not address the main issues of the transition to green energy, while critical funds are missing, such as the regulation of storage, offshore wind, etc.

Ms. Perka underlined that there is an absolute absence of the environmental dimension, while in theory it should serve the “greening” of energy. “One of the most central issues of the n / s is that it provides for the characterization of all RES, SITHYA and Warehousing projects as public benefit. As such they are subject to the law for forced expropriation, without providing any evaluation or criterion. “The burdensome measure that can create new social tensions and contradictions. The public benefit could only apply to projects that do not oppose the conservation of biodiversity, that is, with some criteria”, said the and warned that under the pretext of pushing RES, the framework for permissible forest interventions is changing horizontally and the area that can be committed to approving an intervention is increasing.

Referring, moreover, to the temporary mechanism for the Return of Part of the Next Day Market Revenues, the SYRIZA MP said that there has already been a long delay in getting a cut in the super profits of the power generators. As the legislation will be followed by a ministerial decision, Ms. Perka remarked: “Let us hope that the government will not, once again, do the trick on the energy cartel, regarding the profit limit for energy producers.”

“As PASOK – Movement for Change, we were one of the pioneers who sought to increase the share of Renewable Energy Sources in our country, by producing energy largely from the grassroots base and by providing contracts to small producers and farmers. What is required for us is how one achieves this and with what rules one can achieve it “, said the special spokesman of PASOK-KINALL George Arvanitidis.

“We are raising the issue of redesigning the reciprocal fees from RES projects of large energy companies to local communities. We need to see this again. The 3% that came in a moment must be seen again because that is how we shape social consensus.” said Mr. Arvanitidis.

Addressing the government, he stressed emphatically: “if your main concern is to set high and ambitious goals, if your strategy is to reach the paraglider and because of the impasse to divide the electricity space to a few and select, if your strategy is to do so in the absence of local communities and local government, if you want to strangle small and medium-sized producers, then you are only doing harm to the vision of the green transition and citizens will not be able to equate their own benefit with the development of renewable sources ” .

The special spokesman of PASOK also said that today, the solution can not be the temporary policies that have a temporary duration, but the brave structural interventions for the accuracy of fuel and food.

“SYRIZA, KINAL and other parties and of course New Democracy, are complicit in the crime of the green transition, which today brings despair to the popular family, employees and the self-employed,” said KKE spokeswoman Diamanto Manolakou. “The policy of de-lignification, with the gradual closure of lignite power plants, the acceptance of Community commitments on the pollution trade and the emergence of imported gas as the main fuel for the transition, has been implemented by all bourgeois governments over the last twenty years.”

Employees, Ms. Manolakou said, could live better if the criterion for decision-making was not the profit of the groups, the interest of the ruling capitalist class, the directions and commitments of the European Union, but the criterion of popular Needs. “But this means a socialist way of production, which can use all domestic energy sources to eliminate energy poverty and unemployment, to reduce the country’s energy dependence on imports, to protect the safety of workers, the environment and of course public health “, said the special spokesperson of the KKE.

Hellenic Solution expert Vassilis Viliardos stressed that “an increase in the participation rate in the energy mix for lignite power generation is required from 10% or even lower, which is currently at least 35%. With the integration of ecological technologies, such as “The drying of lignite and the burial of the produced carbon dioxide (CO2) in underground basins. With technologies, that is, applied by many other countries, such as Germany, Australia, etc.”

He also called for the “universal abolition of the adjustment clause mechanism, without its replacement by anyone else, as will eventually be done. In relation to the temporary mechanism for the Return of Part of the Next Day Market Revenue, Vassilis Viliardos observed that “each Minister will determine how much the cartel of the powerful oligarchs of the country will win”.

“It is a bill that regulates the plunder of nature. It is a bill that comes here to make the illegal, legal. It is a bill that comes to give the green light for the plunder of nature in our mountains, on our islands, wherever she is “, complained the special speaker of MERA25 Kriton Arsenis.

“All the experts and the United Nations are telling us that our first priority, our first goal, is to save what is left of our nature. What does that mean? This means that protected areas should be areas that we safeguard as the apple of our eye, like our own eyes and not areas that we liquidate for the last short-term profits, for the last rubble, that is, of money, of a few entrepreneurs “, said the MERA25 MP and added, addressing the government: “in areas of zero intervention, in areas of absolute protection, as a matter of priority, maximize interventions. Send the wind turbines and any project, attendant, roads, networks, now and energy storage facilities and do all this, in violation of European legislation in violation of the convictions against our country, for the non-protection of Natura areas “.

Source: AMPE