What is the ’emergency’ plan for the energy that SYRIZA is preparing

By Niki Zorba

For the last ten days, Alexis Tsipras SYRIZA has been urgently calling for an “emergency plan” to deal with the energy crisis. The President of SYRIZA, in each of his public interventions, reaffirms his party’s position on a plan that will be the opposite of the logical “self-regulation” of the market and will be based on the intervention of the state regulators in the markets.

The energy emergency plan

The “skeleton “of the plan, Mr. Tsipras described it in its recent meeting with representatives of industrial unions: Immediate interventions, following what has been done in other European countries “, which should include” a ceiling on profit in both wholesale and retail and be based on ” controls and regulation of the energy market “, with tools such as” strengthening the futures market, the obligation of bilateral contracts, and if necessary for some time and the suspension of the energy exchange “.

According to competent sources, the elaboration of the plan has already begun, in which tthe financial staff of SYRIZA, all those involved with Energy (from heads of departments to Professor N. Farantouris, from the think tank of Alexis Tsipras) while George Stathakis has been recruited with his team that “runs” the basic processes.

A source involved in the preparation of the plan, told Capital.gr that this plan will “take us out for 1 to 1.5 years” as it is estimated that it will be required to normalize the situation.

Based on the same source, the plan will not be general but will include specific processing, costing, etc. It has not yet been decided, however, how it will be presented.

gas and lignite

At the forefront of the official opposition’s opposition to the energy crisis is violent depoliticisation and gas. The President of SYRIZA he repeated in yesterday’s interview (ANT1) that the government “tied the whole energy mixture of the country to natural gas. In an imported fuel and even transitional, which does not mean green growth, because natural gas is also a transitional fuel, but it is not a renewable energy source” .

According to him, “We have lost the opportunity, even for a significant percentage, to have our own fuel, which is lignite, gradually decreasing, because we have to go to renewable energy sources. But we have to go to this transition having made investments primarily. “We have not invested in RES, we have not invested in RES, we have no possibility to burn lignite and we have tied the whole energy mixture to natural gas.”

This includes the criticism of the official opposition for the results of the Summit to the Prime Minister.

The “Community directive, the target model, the Energy Exchange which in fact today is the most irrational thing there is – in the current conditions, I do not say in some other conditions – where the producers enter and give an offer to the Energy Exchange and the final price “The key to both renewables and lignite is the highest supply of natural gas. The highest supply. And the cost difference does not go to the producer, it goes directly to the consumer with the adjustment clause”, Mr. Tsipras noted in this regard, concluding that:

“This is a mechanism that objectively throws all the burden on the consumer. And the producer, the one who trades energy, has no cost. This is not free competition. This is a competition aimed at the consumer’s pocket. It can not continue. “This is what Portugal and Spain demanded the day before yesterday at the summit to change, to lift.”